


Do the Right Thing

by Kloheisalljackedup



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Black Widow (Movie 2020), DCU, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Bisexual Female Character, Dark MCU, Dark Natasha Romanov, Dubious Consent, Dystopia, F/F, F/M, Minor Character Death, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Obsessive Behavior, Ownership, Possessive Behavior, Sharing a Bed, Stockholm Syndrome, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:09:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29954574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kloheisalljackedup/pseuds/Kloheisalljackedup
Summary: You know (think?) you made the right choice joining the Resistance. But it's lucky for you the Black Widow knew better and stepped in to save you from the Order... and yourself.  You're hers now, and you can only fight against so much.
Relationships: Black Widow/You, Natasha Romanov (Marvel) & Reader, Natasha Romanov (Marvel)/Original Female Character(s), Natasha Romanov (Marvel)/Reader, Natasha/ Reader, natasha Romanoff/reader
Comments: 8
Kudos: 58





	1. Origin Story... ish

S.H.I.E.L.D recruited you right out of high school and you slipped into the academy like a second skin. They brought you in because your hacking skills - while rarely encouraged or legal - were more honed at 15 than most of their seniors agents', and while your hacking improved you also proved yourself more than competent at espionage and sharp shooting.

Natasha was always in your peripherals at the academy - she was hard not to notice. She mentored some of your more advanced classes and knowing what you knew about her– what the world knew about her after the records dump - it was impossible not to be curious.

But honestly, you probably gave her less thought than most. You rarely, if ever, needed to be corrected in your courses so your interaction with her at the academy was minimal. And unlike a lot of your peers, you had a very chaotic personal life and a much stronger penchant to party or – - hack into NASA for fun– - than obsess over your higher-ups.

Between school, your big, loud close knit family, and your boyfriend Ryan, who you met your first week at the academy, you were busy –- and happy.

It wasn’t until you were pulled out of a Military Strategy class and instructed to report to none other than Phil Coulson himself your third year at the academy that Natasha became more to you than a passing curiosity. It felt like a long walk to the principal’s office on your way to the Tri-Skeleton. The whole way you just kept trying to think what the hell you possibly could have done wrong.

And many, many things came to mind.

It was even more perturbing when his door-keeper let you into his personal office and the only other person there was Natasha Romanoff.

_**Oh God. They know about NASA.** _

Despite how well you’d been doing in your espionage courses, you faltered hard seeing her sitting there relaxed in one of the leather armchairs facing Director Coulson’s desk. “Um.. hey, hi!” you squeaked out like a 12 year-old with a crush. It was the first time you can remember honestly being flustered since Adam Tam asked you out in 9th grade, and you’d handled it better then.

She just raised one perfectly sculpted eyebrow at you, smirked, and tilted her head towards the other chair. Your cheeks were redder than her hair as you took a seat. Where the fuck was Phil.

The silence was stiflingly awkward for you, but you could have sworn she was enjoying your turmoil.

After several long minutes though, she took pity. “I know you,” she stated so casually like your heart wasn’t pounding out of your body. “I did a couple days of training in your sharp-shooting class last semester. You’re good.”

Ok- a compliment from the Black Widow- that you can deal with.

You cleared your throat which had somehow gone so dry, “Yeah, you were also a mentor in one of my undercover strategy classes my first year,” you added, nervously tucking some hair behind my ear. “Huh,” she replied. “I don’t remember that.”

You laughed a little louder and more hysterically than you meant to, “Well, I guess I was that good.”

Her smile looked a little more genuine and she was about to reply when the back door to the office opened and Coulson walked in.

Natasha immediately straightened, all signs of leisure erased from her posture.

“Agent Romanoff, Recruit (y/l/n), thank you for coming.” His smile is less than reassuring.

It was rare - almost unheard of - for a student to be sent on an active duty mission, but this was classified as low risk and the most important component was someone who could hack - fast.

And it is a simple mission - drop into northwest Russia 13:00. Hike to old HYDRA base- reach location by 17:00. Copy files off Saved by the Bell looking computer to an (actual) floppy disk - which with all of your years of computer hacking it’s the first time you’ve ever held one. You giggle a little about how much more data could fit on something smaller than one of your eyelashes.

But you do your job - in an out - no complications.

There’s a safe house about 10 miles to your east- just a tiny cabin in the Russian tundra but it has secure wifi where you can upload your stolen files to SHIELD. It also has a fireplace which you more than welcome after the long, freezing trek.

You’ve been trying to act cool the whole time. You are (y/n y/l/n) agent of SHIELD, bad ass spy, defender of — you know that’s always been less than clear. Democracy, maybe? But you’re a good guy - for sure. You’re on a mission with a literal superhero. You can handle the cold.

You cannot handle the cold. Last New Years Eve, Ryan had to carry you home in tears because you swore you were gonna lose your toes from frost bite. You could feel them dying inside your shoes. It was 42 degrees and your shoes were too small but you were chilly and drunk and you get dramatic when you’re cold.

But needless to say, a 10 mile hike through the Russian Tundra did not suit you. When you finally (FINALLY) got the to small one room cabin, Natasha got a fire going while you shivered pathetically, balled up in your parka on a battered, old sofa.

The warmth from the small log fireplace feels like the best luxury you’ve ever known and the lumpy couch - pattern straight out of an teenager’s basement in an 80s movie - might be the most comfortable thing you’ve ever sat on. Slowly, you unfurl yourself in and take off your gear. First your tactical boots, then your tool belt, and eventually even your SHIELD issued catsuit when the place gets warm enough.

By the time you’ve zonked out on the couch with your head back and mouth hanging open, you’ve almost forgotten Natasha even exists until she nudges you back into consciousness with a smirk and a hot mug of tea and says, “Stand up for a minute, it’s a pull out.”

You sip your tea lazily and watch her make up the futon before gracelessly collapsing right back into it and muttering a slurred, “g’night”. Your brain feels like mush and your limbs feel so heavy and you don’t remember anything else until the next morning except maybe…

Later you’ll think you dreamed it, but you have this persistent memory of Natasha wrapping around you and murmuring, “have to keep you warm,” into the crook of your neck.

But that doesn’t make any sense. It was plenty warm with the fire. You were just exhausted.

The next mission you get sent on with Natasha is also very simple and routine.

But it goes anything but.

The base was supposed to be abandoned. It was a simple recon mission - Technically Natasha didn’t even need to go except you were still a student and needed to be supervised - and also as good as you’d gotten they hadn’t taught you how to fly a Quinjet yet.

You can hear the chaos raging outside. The air smells like gunpowder and blood and you are so, so close to cracking the firewall. You’re scared. Terrified, but these files are essential. They could save people’s lives. You keep going and right as you through the door to the lab you’re in flies open.

It’s the end. It’s HYDRA, you’re sure of it.

And it is, but it’s Natasha too and she has one huge man in a headlock between her legs as she fires three shots into the other big guy trying to come in.

You register- briefly - that it’s the first time you’ve ever seen someone die.

But you can’t unpack that right then - the files are on the thumb drive and Natasha is fighting off 3 men twice her size. So you pull out your SHIELD issued pistol that you were so good at in training, but have never actually had to point at a living target. You prepare yourself to shoot, but before you can another shot rings out and you hear a desperate scream of your name.

Before you can even register what’s happened, 7… maybe 8 more gun shots fire and the men you were prepared to kill are suddenly very dead on the ground in front of you - their bodies still and bullet riddled in grotesque ways that make you want to vomit.

And Natasha is sitting amongst them looking very annoyed as blood pools from a wound in her thigh.

‘Backup is on the way,” she grunts through gritted teeth. “There’s a chopper coming, but you gotta get us to the roof. I don’t think I can walk alone.” The walk to the roof is a surreal blur with Natasha’s weight leaning heavily into your side. You should be the one comforting her, but she’s the one who has to tell you to keep going, that you’ve done so well, that it’s almost over, that you’ll be fine.

You make it to the roof right as the SHIELD chopper is landing. Medics immediately swarm out to tend to Natasha and the last thing you hear from her as she’s being wheeled away is an indignant insistence that she’s fine and they need to be looking after you. She’s under the rest of the way back to the safehouse in Berlin, and you don’t see her again until you’re already back in New York and debriefed.

You’re furious. Of all the things you know you should be feeling, anger is not one of them (though it does tend to be your default). As far as appropriate feelings are concerned, gratitude is probably up there, relief, undying devotion, maybe - but you just feel angry.

You storm into med bay three days later - straight from your debrief.

She smiled when you burst in; earnest and authentic - not expressions most people ever get to see from the Black Widow.

“What in the actual hell, Agent Romanoff??” you demand.

She’s frowning now.

She positions herself a little more upright in the hospital bed - where her leg is still hanging elevated in a sling from where she took a bullet.

Where she took a bullet for you.

“Why would you do that? Why would you jump in front of a fucking bullet for me?”

She’s not saying anything. Just watching you pace with an intense look that you cannot place but it makes you feel foolish and young and like she knows all your secrets and maybe you should apologize and what were you mad about again?

She’s still looking at you like that when she speaks slowly and low, like she’s telling you something vital, something she really needs you to understand. “(y/n), it was a kill shot. They were aiming to kill you. If I hadn’t gotten between you and them, you could have died.”

You blink dumbly a few times. Well, that didn’t seem like a big secret. It was HYDRA. Of course they were shooting to kill.

You give her the most incredulous look you can muster, “Yes, of course but you..”

Almost faster than you can register, her intense look is gone and the smug little smirk you’re much more accustom to is back when she cuts you off, “analyzed the threat and intercepted the bullet in a non-essential body part. They were aiming for your kidney, they got a little piece of my thigh. Everyone is alive and we got what we went for.”

You really don’t have anything to say to that.

When you do speak again, it comes out more as a helpless question. “Still, you took a bullet.. for.. me?”

She just shrugs, still smirking, “No regrets.”

“I…” You have no idea what to say to that either.

“I um, thank you?” Probably shouldn’t have been that.

But her smirk changes to a genuine smile when she says, “Of course.”

You leave after that, but you send her flowers. Really nice ones.

That’s the last time you see Natasha before it happens.

Honestly, the worst thing about the New World Order might be the hindsight. You want to kick yourself everyday thinking back for not seeing it coming.

The most powerful nation on earth assembles elite groups of super humans (and aliens!) to protect the planet – and then that same nation had a really bad crisis of conscience and elects a sycophant wannabe dictator as its president, who is then given power as commander and chief over these elite superheroes and black ops divisions.

The thing is, no one should have been able to use these… people? People, mostly, for any sort of political reason.

But this time, it’s really bad.

They’re given bad intel from the Pentagon - intentionally. Sent on what they think are humanitarian crisis missions only to end up being the humanitarian crisis. And they’re heroes. They’re the good guys. As soon as it became blindingly obvious to them that they were pawns of a tyrannical government - They rebelled. Of course they did. It’s admirable really.

But the betrayal hit hard and the atrocities they had conducted by order of the new regime hit harder.

It wasn’t a stretch for them to assume they could do it better on their own. And it wasn’t surprising how that turned out.

Superman was the first to break. Wonder woman followed soon after and in less than 6 months the entire Justice League was a “rogue enemy combatant” of the United States.

They were wiping out governing bodies at every level - from the United State’s Congress to rural Montana neighborhood boards - and implementing their own governance - one of fairness and righteousness. Where theirs was the absolute authority, and people would learn quickly not to question it.

Ryan -sweet, strong, duty bound Ryan, was a SHIELD legacy. His great-grandfather had been there at the beginning with Agent Carter and everyone in his family had signed up since. Ryan was one of the first to join the Resistance. Ryan joined the resistance before the Avengers even sided with the NWO.

He asked if you would come with him and he warned you it would be horrible. But how could you have said no? You loved him so much and he wasn’t wrong - what was happening under the New World Order was terrible. Governments falling all over the world, mass executions without trials of anyone who seemed associated with a dissenting government. Forced, strictly controlled “Utopias” that felt like that felt like something straight out of an Orwell novel being diligently monitored by NWO members. Horrific punishments for so much as disagreeing with what the local NWO head deemed “ Unifying”.

Joining the Resistance was the right thing to do.

The first six months as rogues were awful. Nights so cold you sometimes reminisced about being back in that cabin in Russia with Natasha. At first because you remembered that was the numbest your toes had ever been before–- that you weren’t lying about– — but the more you thought about it...

Sometimes, when you were wrapped around Ryan, shivering and clutching socks full of long-cold coal that you'd used to heat up your shitty canned dinner- you’d wonder if you imagined how warm you felt falling asleep that night in Russia-- if you imagined Natasha holding you -- if you imagined the cottony feeling of opiates when you finished your tea.

You weren’t surprised really, that she chose to join the Order.

You imagine she’s been the pawn of one tyrannical government too many and everyone has their “fuck it, I’ll do myself” point.

So no, you weren’t surprised when you heard what side Black Widow had taken.

But you were surprised the next time you saw her.

Ryan and you and your little rag tag team of rebels were in some tiny town in Bulgaria about 100 kilometers south out of Sofia. It was just supposed to be a safe place to hole up and plan for a few days, somewhere you could sleep.

And you were asleep. Comfortably and peacefully in a bed that maybe in your old life you would have thought was lumpy, but at the time felt like heaven - felt like that old busted futon in Russia.

You never even got to say goodbye.

There is one quick “ _whoosh_ ” of wind and then Ryan was still laying next to you, his neck was bent at a horrible angle.

You could barely even feel the hands wrapping around your neck too as you looked at him in such shock and loss.

And then a familiar, raspy voice wrung out strong and loud.

“STOP!”

The hands left your neck.

“She’s mine. I’ll take her. She’s mine.”

The last thing you remember is staring at Ryan’s unmoving face and whispering, “please, no.” before you felt the icy prick of a needle in your neck and everything went dark under a curtain of red hair .


	2. Wake Up, Do Better.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You wake up in her bed.

You’re so comfortable when you come to-- dizzy, but cozy.

The bed is soft and warm and smells like vanilla and expensive detergent. There are fingers gently combing through your hair. You’re home and safe -- the last year was just a bad dream and you’re back in your little studio in Bushwick with…

Ryan. Your eyes fly open. You saw Ryan die.

This is not your apartment in Brooklyn. The sheets are too soft and the smells are all wrong and you can’t hear any noise from the subway.

You shoot up and scramble away from the fingers in your hair, falling backwards out of the strange bed, tangled in expensive sheets. You land on plush carpet where you want scuffed hardwood and back yourself into a corner -- a very nice corner with fresh paint and crown molding and this is not your home or any of the places you’ve landed over the past year.

You’re disoriented; cloudy and shaky, and desperately thirsty.

All you can remember are Ryan’s wide, dead eyes and…

She’s propped up on her elbows regarding you with a carefully neutral expression when you look up and meet her calm eyes with your wide, terrified ones. Natasha gracefully extracts herself from the king sized bed you just fell from and comes to crouch in front of you.

Every bit of training you’ve ever had seems to leave you. Your breathing is erratic, there are tears streaming down your cheeks, and you flinch back hard and squeeze your eyes shut when she lifts her hand towards you. Her hand cups your face gently, her thumb uselessly brushing away your fast falling tears.

“(Y/N), hey look at me. You’re safe, ok? You’re safe. I’m not going to hurt you. No one is going to hurt you, sweetheart. Please look at me.”

You just clench your eyes tighter and shake your head rapidly, your panic growing by the second and your breathing becoming more difficult until you can’t pull any air into your lungs at all.

She sighs and mutters a quiet, “shit” before getting up to move to your side, her hand going to your back and gently directing you to lean forward. “Ok, (y/n). You’re having a panic attack. We have to get your breathing back to normal, ok? You know the drill - head between your knees and deep, slow breaths. That’s it, good girl, keep breathing.”

You begin to get your bearings back, and air is coming easier again. As your breathing returns to normal and the ringing in your ears resides, your panic dissipates and your anger bubbles up replacing your icy terror with boiling rage.

Natasha is still coaching you through the attack, stroking your back and speaking softly, “Good, you’re doing so good. Can you look up, baby? Can you tell me three things you can see?”

You do look up at that and her face is inches from yours--her eyes are soft and warm, and she has a small, encouraging smile on her face.

You meet her soft gaze with as much steel as you can muster.

“I see a traitor,” you growl out.

Her smile drops.

“I see a kidnapper.”

Her eyes lose their warmth.

“I see a murderous psychopath bitch. Is that three?”

She pulls back from you and smirks, even laughs a little as she gets up and walks away, casting a calculating glance over her shoulder to where you’re still seething in the corner of the room. “Yeah, you’re gonna be just fine”.

Natasha leaves the bedroom, not even bothering to close the door behind her. She knows you won’t run. You’re thoughts are all over the place and despite your brief moment of bravado you are still fucking terrified not to mention your body feels weak from dehydration and sluggish from the drugs still making their way out of your system. You don’t know where you are or who else is here and even if it is just you and Natasha, you wouldn’t make it 10 feet if she didn’t want you to. You’re as trapped here in this lovely room with the door wide open as you would be in a cell on the Raft and she knows you know that.

Your only real option here is to try and stay calm and play smart and see how things are about to unfold. You’re a highly wanted rebel by the NWO and your boyfriend along with, you’re assuming, the rest of your little team, are lying dead in southern Bulgaria. It’s almost safe to assume that since you aren’t lying there with them, your life isn’t in any immediate danger. Almost.

You untangle yourself from the sheet that’s still wrapped around your legs and stand up, making your way over to the windows on the opposite side of the room and peering out to see if you can get any sense of where in the world you are. You honestly laugh out loud when you realize you’re in New Jersey. A year of running all over the world operating out of the most remote shadows as far away from any grids as possible and here you are, staring across the Hudson as the familiar lights of Manhattan begin to twinkle on as the sky grows dark.

It’s somehow both comforting and unnerving to be so close to home. The city you know so well is so close you could reach out and touch it, but the world is all an unfamiliar place now.

Besides, you know there are no resistance cells operating in New York anymore. Everyone who tried to stick around after SHIELD fell got taken out pretty fast. There were too many cameras, too many Order members, and no way to disappear fast.

That was the same story for almost every major city on earth. If you’re honest with yourself, your scattered group of resistance fighters hadn’t proven to be all that effective. You’d had a few victories here and there, taking out a couple Order headquarters and freeing some political prisoners, but for the most part your efforts had been sporadic and chaotic, and far more of your time and resources were spent on simply staying hidden and alive.

Being here now - right back where you started but without Ryan - a feeling of foolishness and grief settles low in your stomach. Or maybe that’s just hunger. You’ve been hungry for a year.

Whatever you’re feeling is replaced with shock and total indignation when you look down your body to your twisting stomach, taking yourself in for the first time and realizing that you most certainly are not wearing the jeans and ugly knit sweater you went to sleep in in Bulgaria. Your mouth falls open as you stare down at yourself in disbelief. What. The actual. Fuck?

It’s this moment when Natasha walks back in and sees you gaping down at yourself. She’s carrying a plate with a sandwich and a tall glass of water which she sits down on the bedside table. “Here”, she says, gesturing to the food. “You need to eat. You got too skinny.”

You were going to play it calm and smart, but you can’t help scoffing at her in disbelief. “Um, you would fucking know! Where the fuck are my clothes?!”

She has the actual audacity to roll her eyes at you. “They’re in the trash. They were disgusting.”

You loved that sweater. Her posture goes a little more rigid and she actually appears slightly uncomfortable for a moment when you just gape at her, horrified.

But she moves back to her original task soon enough - your unapproved wardrobe change seemingly shelved - for now.

“Seriously, (y/n). You need water and food, you’ve been out for almost 30 hours.”

“Well then maybe we need to reconsider my dosage, doctor!” you snap as you gesture to the food and water.

She gets what you’re implying and rolls her eyes (Again!) before reaching down to take a bite of the sandwich and a big gulp of the water. “See? All clear.”

But you still aren’t budging. This was not your plan. Be calm, play smart - but you’re so angry and sad and indignant and you want to keep fighting. You open your mouth to do so, **_But it wasn’t last time, was it? The tea wasn’t ‘all clear’ that night in Russia_** , is on the tip of your tongue…

…But your throat is dry and your stomach is empty and even though you just slept for a day and a half you’re suddenly so exhausted you can’t even stay standing and - oh God - you think you’re going to cry again.

Defeated, you walk over and sit down on the bed, gulping down all the water in one go and finishing the sandwich in less than a minute. Natasha sat next to you while you ate, and when you finished she asked if you wanted more. **_Yes_**. “No.” She lifted an eyebrow at you like she knew you were lying, but this time she didn’t push.

“Ok, well just ask if you want it. The bathroom is right over there,” she says, gesturing to a door to her right, “If you want to take a shower.”

You do want to take a shower. It had been almost a week since you’d slipped into a motel room past housekeeping in nowhere, Slovenia for a 5 minute rinse, and that was the last time you’d had hot water.

But you just sigh, pinching the bridge of your nose and looking down to hide your watery eyes behind your tangled curtain of hair. When you feel like you can speak again without crying you whisper out, “I just want to know why I’m here, Natasha. I want to know why I’m not dead in Bulgaria. I want to know what’s going to happen to me.” You look up at her then to find her regarding you thoughtfully before she seems to make a decision.

“We have a lot to talk about, I guess. Why don’t you take a shower first, ok? There’s clean towels in the closet and clean clothes in the dresser. Come find me in the living room when you’re done and we can talk.”

You stare at her for a solid minute. You want to rage - scream at her to start fucking talking - now, but you’re so tired and grimy and despite your less than stellar judgement a few times today, you are also a mostly trained professional- you didn’t get a chance to graduate to full agent but you know indignation and beratement are not effective strategies of extracting information. So you make this first concession to her - and wonder how many more you’re going to have to make.

She smiles at you when you agree, standing up and grabbing the empty plate and glass in one hand. She turns to walk away and then thinks better of it, turning back to you and cupping your chin with her free hand, tilting your head up to meet her eyes. She looks intently into your eyes before saying, “You are not in danger here, (y/n), ok? I am not going to kill you. I am not going to harm you and neither is anyone else. We have a lot to talk about, but you’re going to be ok, ok?”

You nod once and she smiles at you again, gently dragging her knuckles up over your cheek before turning and leaving the room, this time softly closing the door behind her.


	3. Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You learn your place.

The shower has always been your favorite place to cry. It’s also always been your favorite place to strategize, so you’re surprised, given the circumstance, when you don’t find yourself doing either. Instead you just numbly go through the motions, something about the hot water and expensive products that throws you back into a well practiced routine from a past life. You’re only brought fully back into the present when the water goes cold somewhere during what might have been your fourth round of conditioner.

You step out of the shower and into the main part of the in-suite. There are products on the counter to the left of one of the sinks that have definitely been left out for you. A new toothbrush, deodorant, facewash, moisturizer. There’s even three different types of brushes and a little bottle of detangler.

If you’d come across a spread like this during your time underground, you would have thought it was a trap.

Still, it’s there and clearly meant for you and even the threat of poison sounds worth name brand toothpaste at the moment.

You are a little taken aback when you meet your own eyes in the mirror, though. It’s not the gaunt cheeks or chapped lips or sunburned skin from too many days unprotected hiking through thin mountain air - it’s how haunted you look. It’s like you’re wearing every loss around your eyes and you jump back dropping the jar of moisturizer in your hands when Ryan’s dead face flashes across your own reflection.

You recompose yourself quickly. It’s no shock that you have a lot of trauma but you have to find a way to manage it right now until you can get a firm grasp on your situation and figure out your next move. You need a plan, and you can’t make a plan without knowing all the facts.

Well, that’s actually not true. If the last year has taught you anything, you can make lots of plans without knowing all the facts - it’s just that people usually end up dead.

You stare down your own reflection. You’ve always been a bit… dramatic. Your emotions tend to treat your face like their own personal stage if you don’t reign them in tight - especially your temper. But you’ve gone through training - you know how to control your emotions and utilize them.

“Ok, (y/n),” you say out loud to the ghost-girl in the mirror. “This is a fact-finding mission. Natasha clearly has some stake in your well-being or is operating on behalf of someone who does. You are open to listening. She is not your enemy, she is your source. She is also a super spy so don’t try and get cute. Calm and smart. Go handle your shit.”

You’re feeling more confident and solid after your mirror pep talk -- until you open the dresser to find something to wear.

You blink down in complete shock for several long moments before frantically pulling open every other drawer just to find the exact same thing. “What the fuck what the fuck whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuck,” you mutter over and over to yourself, becoming more and more hysterical as you dig through the 4 drawers of the dresser.

There are plenty of clothes and it’s not that they aren’t your style - it’s that they are YOUR clothes. Your old 5k shirts and vintage band tees and paint splattered denim shorts. Your P.E. shorts from middle school that you still sleep in. Your “Free Snooki” tanktop you and Ryan bought hammered last summer down the shore.

You run to the walk-in closet. It’s the same thing. Half of it is full of your dresses and your skirts, and your blouses. Your shoes are all lined up neatly in racks and - holy shit- is that your prom dress?! Every piece of clothing you didn’t bring with you in the single Jansport backpack you took when you ran is in this bedroom.

And it’s more than that - your paintings are stacked against the far back corner next to boxes of your books - your photo albums, your record player, your memory box---

How long has she been planning to bring you here? How long does she expect you to stay?

You are **_reeling_** but you have to **_reel it in_**.

You have to stay calm, because frankly, creeped the fuck out as you are, this still isn’t the most important mystery you need solved.

You decide, for now, that you’re just not going to mention it. Except she clearly wanted you to see this, wanted you to ask about it.

You put on the most neutral clothes you can find - a long sleeved purple t-shirt and a pair of gray Soffe shorts - standard basic bitch issued sleepwear. Maybe she’ll think you were too tired to notice and just pulled on the first thing you saw out of the top drawer.

You pad quietly down the hall towards where you’re assuming she’s waiting for you in the living room.

The apartment is nice, modern - but smaller than you were expecting. The short hall opens into an open plan living area with the living room to the right and the kitchen to the left and there don’t appear to be any other rooms. There are floor to ceiling windows on the far wall of the living room that give a breathtaking view of the Manhattan skyline, but your first thought is, **_“Wow, for a master spy with a compromised identity, she sure isn’t worried about being assassinated by a sniper.”_ **Guess that’s how safe high-ranking Order members are feeling these days.

She’s sitting in the middle of a large, L-shaped couch reading something on her phone when you walk fully into her view. She looks up and smiles at you giving you a once over, and you’re sure she’s trying to get a read on what you’re thinking based on which of your own clothes you chose to put on.

You just give her a small smile back and make to go sit against the far arm of the couch when she pats the spot next to her, clearly indicating for you to sit.

 _ **“Do not be petulant. Do not be difficult. Fact-finding mission,”** _you remind yourself.

Her smile widens when you sit without complaint.

“Good shower? You were in there for almost an hour. Do you want something to dri---”

“Why am I here Natasha?”

Maybe just a tiny bit petulant.

She gives an annoyed little sigh, but concedes. “Right. I’ve been trying to think about where to start. Maybe just-- let me explain and then I will answer whatever questions you have, ok? There’s a lot to unpack here, and you’re not going to like most of it.”

She levels you with a look to make sure you understand, and you do. And honestly, you weren’t expecting to like any of this conversation and at least it seems like she’s going for the truth here, so you nod your head and motion for her to continue.

“A lot of agents and students joined the Resistance when SHIELD fell. And a lot of them joined the NWO as well - almost no one stayed neutral and the agency split in two.”

You just nod. You know all this already.

“I know you know that already - but on our side -it became policy in the NWO that any former SHIELD associate who was working with the Resistance was a K.O.S.” You can feel the color drain from your face at this revelation, and even she has the good grace to look a little ashamed. You want to ask how it’s possible that you didn’t know that. You’d hacked into the Order at least 3 dozen times and half of those were to check their list of known resistance remembers and their locations. You knew you were probably a high level target with Ryan’s early leadership and your ability to take down a SHIELD firewall in your sleep, but you never came across anything about blanket Kill on Sight orders.

Unless…

Like she can see what you’re thinking, she says, “You never hacked the Order, (y/n). You were just good enough that we could never quite track an IP address to your location. But every time you “got in” you were seeing exactly what they wanted you to see.”

You don’t want to believe it but it all makes so much sense. All the bad intel, all the ambushes, the false leads and false flags -- you’re whole last year really had been for nothing.

You know you’re far away from Natasha’s living room right now, somewhere back in the recesses of your mind trying to look for a missed clue in every line of code…

She brings you back with a light hand on your shoulder that trails down your arm before squeezing your hand gently and continuing.

“Anyway, the K.O.S. was too much even for the Order -- especially the former SHIELD members. Those were people’s friends, partners, family members -- people who’d saved their lives and saved the world - So in an effort to appease the NWO’s SHIELD faction, a compromise of sorts was made.

Any NWO member in good standing could… sponsor… a rebel, if you will. We claim all responsibility for that person, and as long as we are adequately able to show that under our care that person no longer poses or intends to pose any threat to the NWO then the K.O.S. order is lifted. That person is also officially … let’s say-- an extension of -- the claimant in the Order and no other Order member is allowed to act against them in retaliation. Essentially, your Kill Order becomes an Order of Protection.”

 ** _“STOP! She’s mine. I’ll take her. She’s mine,”_ **rings somewhere like a far away bell in your memory.

“You claimed me.”

“Yes.”

You just blink at her dumbly, opening and closing your mouth over and over again with all of the questions rolling around in your brain snowballing into an avalanche of white nothingness until your head goes completely blank.

She directs your chin with one finger so you meet her eyes and asks you very slowly and deliberately, “Do you understand what I’m saying? Do you understand what this means about your safety?”

You shake the fog from your head and realize that -oh fuck- you do.

You respond as slowly and deliberately as she had asked, “I am safe with you. I am only safe because of you. I will no longer be safe without you.”

She let’s go of your chin and nods at you. “Good. Yes, that is pretty much the gist of it.”

She sits back against the couch looking pleased as you continue to gape at her. You’re still missing something here, something crucial.

She sighs when you just continue to stare at her, open mouthed - the only question you can adequately form in your overexerted, traumatized, exhausted, brain is just **_“Why? why? why?”_** over and over again on loop.

She sits forward again, elbows balanced on her knees and hands clasped together, head leaned forward and face partially hidden by her hair. It’s much longer now than you remember it being and a more auburn shade of red. It suits her, you notice, plus you did always think the fire engine was a little obvious considering her survival so often required her to be incognito.

Where she was firm and to the point during the first part of this conversation - professional, almost - she seems hesitant- maybe even a little embarrassed when she speaks to you again, pushing her hair behind her ear and mostly looking down when she speaks, only occasionally glancing to her side for any reaction from you.

“I came to get you. Before SHIELD even fell when I’d made up my mind about joining the Order, I came back to New York to get you and bring you with me, but you were long gone and deep underground by then. I had a feeling you might choose to join the resistance, and I was hoping I could intercept you before that happened, but it seems you’d really gotten a jump on marking yourself for death.

\--That’s when I brought your stuff here, by the way, when it was obvious you weren’t planning on going back to your apartment. I know you noticed.--

And I kept looking for you all of last year. You really are quite impressive, little hacker, no one else could have hidden their footprints from me for that long.” She finally looks up at you fully, an almost playful smile on her lips, and just you don’t… you just don’t...

“I don’t… I don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand, darling?”

“Any of it I....” **_was so confused by everything she was telling me. Why had she come in the first place? Why did she keep looking? Why did she save me? Why did she care?_ **

But… first things first-

“How - how did you finally find me?” _**Where did I mess up? How did I get Ryan killed?**_

“I didn’t. That safehouse was compromised weeks ago, I just happened to be on the team sent to… deal with...whatever resistance was there when the monitors picked up a new set of heat signatures. It was a random assignment but I’d been trying to go on as many of those missions as I could, just in case....” She trails off and looks away from you. She almost looks like she’s trying not to cry. “If I hadn’t been there that night…”

“...I’d be dead like my friends.” **_Dead like Ryan. Murdered in my sleep with no charges, no trial, my body dumped in a pit somewhere in Eastern Europe. My family never knowing what happened to me._**

Her head whips back towards you and those are definitely tears making her green eyes shine. It just adds so much to your confusion.

“They aren’t all dead, (y/n). I swear I did not know you were in that house. It was too late for… it was too late for him, by the time I realized who was… that you were there, that that was your team, but the other three were spared. They’re in an NWO re-education facility.”

**_Re-education- what kind of Nazi bullsh--- wait. Other three?… there were 6 of us… someone got out._ **

But that is a thought for another time. Whoever they were, you’re no good to each other right now and you are still so lost when it comes to Natasha’s motive, and if you can’t understand that then you don’t hold a single card.

“I still don’t understand why… why did you come for me? Why were you looking? Why did you save me? Claim me? I mean… we, we barely even know each other.”

Something longing and desperate flashes across her eyes as they track your confused face when she says softly, “I took a bullet for you once.” She doesn’t seem to find what she’s looking for when your face morphs from confused to mocking.

“You ‘ _analyzed a threat and took a bullet in a non-essential body part’_ in order to complete a mission,” You parrot back her own words to you in the SHIELD medbay almost a year and a half ago now. It feels like it’s been much longer. You don’t even think you’d recognize the naïve academy student from that day. The one who had just seen death for the first time. You’ve seen so much of it since.

She smiles sadly down at her lap, rubbing her thumb over a spot on her upper thigh almost reverently.

 ** _The scar,_** you realize.

“You seemed pretty grateful, at the time.” She actually looks… hurt?

You take a deep breath to center yourself. Being antagonizing and flippant is not your best move right now and besides… you were grateful. Are. Whatever is happening now doesn’t change that she saved your life then, so you tell her as much.

“I’m sorry,” you say. “I was grateful. I am. I guess being shot at just isn’t such a novelty to me anymore.”

You were going for a little bit of dark levity but she turns her sad gaze from her lap to your profile and states more than asks, “I’m not the only person to have taken a bullet for you anymore.”

“No,” you shake your head in sad confirmation, lost for a moment in a memory, the heavy, sick, and all too familiar feeling of guilt washing over you.

Natasha’s hand finds the fist you didn’t realize you’d curled against your mouth, and you don’t pull away when she opens your palm and brings your laced fingers to rest on her lap over her bullet scar.

You sit together in contemplative silence for a while. You’re digesting everything you’ve just heard, still trying to make the last piece of the puzzle click, and you can practically feel the tension radiating off Natasha next to you.

Finally, you pull your hand back, running it through your still damp hair and shaking your head before murmuring an exhausted, “I just don’t understand.”

Natasha seems to have made a decision about whatever internal debate she’d just been having, because she turns to you quickly, angling her body fully towards you on the couch and taking both of your wrists in her hands forcing you to turn towards her the same.

And while it is true, you really do barely know her, the look in her eyes is familiar. It’s the same look she gave you when she explained why she took the bullet for you - not her flippant remark about threat analysis, but when she explained that it had been a kill shot. That that bullet had been meant to kill you so **_of course_** she stopped it.

You have an awful, sinking feeling that you will not like where this conversation is about to go.

“(Y/n), I came to get you because I wanted you with me. I wanted to keep you close to me. I wanted to keep you safe and take care of you through whatever horrors were about to reign down on the world from the NWO and from yourself- from your well-intentioned naivety and starry-eyed puppy love that guaranteed you were going to pick the losingest side in an impossible war and get yourself killed for no reason.”

Your nostrils flare in outrage at her --- to be fair --- not too far off the money assessment of your choices at the time -- and you yank your hands away from her. But she holds tight. Not quite tight enough to hurt, but tight enough that you can't get away, and there is the promise of pain in that grip if you try to again.

“I kept looking because those feelings, this need to protect you, didn’t go away. They kept getting stronger with every raid, every cold trail, every report of a dead resistance fighter.”

Any trace of her earlier vulnerability is gone. Her eyes are steel as they bore into yours unblinking and there is a cold finality to her tone when she speaks her next words to you.

“You are here with me because I want you here with me. You are alive because I want you alive. I claimed you because I **_want you_**.”

_This_ , you realize, is the _Black Widow_.

**_Shit._ **


	4. Best Just to Drink Through It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You need to think.

_**Shit.** _

“I… I’ll uh, I’ll take that drink now.”

“ _…Huh_?” Her rigid posture slackens and her grip on your wrists loosens. The stern, cold look on her face shifts into one of total bafflement as she tilts her head to the side and a crease forms between her eyebrows as she regards you like you’re crazy.

_**Yeah. I’m the crazy one here. Pot, meet Kettle.** _

You swallow and lick your lips before continuing. “Earlier, I believed you were trying to offer me a drink when I interrupted you, I apologize for that by the way, but I would very much like that drink. Now. Please.”

She shakes her head and gives you an entirely bewildered look but she slowly lowers your wrists and releases them, leaning back from you and going to get up.

“Okaaaayyy,” she draws out very slowly, still looking at you like you’re nuts. “What would you like? I think I have orange juice and a bunch of different tea, or-”

“Just a bottle of vodka will be fine, thanks.”

She scoffs out at little, unbelieving laugh raising her eyebrows at you and shaking her head in wide-eyed disbelief, but she gets up and goes to the kitchen and comes back with an icy bottle of vodka and two shot glasses.

Funny. You don’t remember asking for a glass. Or offering to share.

She cracks the bottle and fills both short glasses to the brim. You pick up the bottle as soon as she sets it down and take a long, cold pull.

“Seriously, (y/n)??!” she growls out at you.

**_Yes, ‘seriously’ bitch, are you kidding me? Do you know what kind of weekend I’ve had?_ **

You shutter and cough a little at the sharp, freezing burn, breathing in deep through your nose and out through your mouth. She reaches to take the bottle from your hand but you hold up a finger and shake your head, and to her credit, she just scoffs and rolls her eyes, downing the shots she’d poured for the two of you in quick succession as you take another ill-advisedly long pull from the bottle for someone who hasn’t had a drink in over a year.

When you’re done you sit the bottle back on the glass coffee table in front you and lean into the back of the couch letting your head fall back and your eyes fall shut. You stay that way in your thoughts letting the alcohol take hold for less than a minute before you spring up, grab the bottle again, and take another swig.

You look over at Natasha who is shaking her head at you and giving you a look that borders on disgusted.

“What?”

“Are you going to say anything? Anything about what I just said?”

“I’m thinking.”

“You’re drinking.”

“I’m thinking-drinking! It’s when I do my best thinking!” **_And your most destructive drinking._**

She closes her eyes and lets a long breath out through her nose and it looks like she is trying very hard to rein in a barrage of beratements against you, but in the end she just sighs and takes another shot, before mirroring your position with her head leaned back and eyes closed.

You let the alcohol do its job and numb the edges of your very fresh grief and nerve rattling anxiety long enough that you can focus on the immediate matter at hand: How to approach your new reality… with Natasha.

Because she really is what it comes down to. There is no reality for you right now that she is not the most integral part of. Your life very literally depends on her and so does what that life is going to be like for you, and what it could be in the future.

You can’t help wanting to make her the bad guy. You have so much grief and pain and anger and you need someone to funnel that into. You need someone to blame and to rebel against so that you can still feel like you’re part of the rebellion because if you aren’t then who are you and what did you lose everything for?

She’s an Order member and that’s not… after everything you’ve seen this last year, that’s not something you can respect. For anyone. For any reason. Ever.

And yes… you are getting some major Glenn Close _Dangerous Liaison_ vibes, but… you believe her when she says she wants to protect you ( and you don’t even have a bunny, so) you don’t sense any real danger with her – but she is unpredictable and unstable… very much so from what you’ve seen so far today.

You understand now what her motives are, what her feelings are and the intensity of her care for you is alarming and concerning given that before today you’d interacted all of 4 times (if you don’t count the being drugged and kidnapped thing), granted 2 of those 4 times were very intense but she’s gone on thousands of missions with just as many operatives so her hyper-attachment to you doesn’t make any logical sense.

You’re no psychologist, but Natalia Romanova is the poster child for childhood trauma and complex PTSD so there’s probably loads of delusional projecting going on here causing her to form unhealthy attachments and obsessions, not to mentions feelings of entitlement to the things she wants as a result of being deprived all her wants in her developmental years. Maybe you aren’t a psychologist, but you’ve been going to one since you were 10. _(You were a messed up kid, what kind of 4th grader likes to hack into government websites for fun?)_

You thought you only knew her a little, but the truth is you really don’t know her at all. Natasha Romanoff - Avenger, mentor, Agent of SHIELD - is just one of who knows how many carefully crafted persona’s belonging to the most accomplished Widow ever turned out by the Red Room.

So if you don’t sense any danger, you’re being a fool.

But you think… you think maybe she wants to be the Natasha that you kinda knew with you, and you think maybe you should just let her.

You don’t have any real choices here which you **HATE** , but your options are:

 **1)** Try to run and she’ll stop you and probably use any method of restraint to stop you from trying again

 **2)** Try to run and by some random miracle of God, make it out the front door and get gunned down by the NWO before you reach the next apartment building.

 **3)** Stay here and make things as difficult and painful on the both of you as possible creating an environment so toxic from which you have no escape that you end up trying to drown yourself in the bathtub.

 **4)** Accept that this is where you are right now, accept the comfort and the safety she’s offering you, use her affection to get what you want, and be vigilantly on the lookout for opportunities to escape. 

**5)** Full blown Stockholm Syndrome.

You’re going to have to go with what’s behind door number 4.

Maybe it won’t even be that bad if you can manage to put your pride away and just be for a little bit. It’s been so long since you were safe and comfortable and looked after. Where basic necessities weren’t a struggle and people didn’t constantly want to kill you and you weren’t constantly obligated to save people. You’re bereaved and exhausted and while you hope you’re still well-intentioned you are certainly no longer naïve.

You owe your life to Natasha and you owe your sanity to yourself, and even if it was… a little misguided.. she’s never acted in anything except what she thought was your best interest.

Unless…

And there is one thing you absolutely have to know. What will make the difference between 4 and 3.

You don’t know how long you’ve been lost in your thoughts but when you blink your eyes open with this new determination you’re met with Natasha’s eyes watching you from a few feet away on the couch, head still tilted back the same as yours, but angled towards you, waiting patiently for whatever you had to say.

She gives you a small smile and says, “welcome back”.

You regard her wearily, anxious about what you have to ask because you think you know the answer and you’re terrified of the repercussions.

You sit up slowly, the alcohol seeming like a worse idea now as your head spins and throbs. You turn to face her on the couch, pulling your legs up under you and straightening your spine. She sits up as well, one leg tucked beneath her, giving you her fullest attention.

“I have to ask you something - and don’t you dare lie to me.” She sits up straighter. The rock hard edge and barely concealed despair in your voice seems to register with her. “I promise.”

“That first mission together in Russia, did you put something in my tea?”

Natasha goes very, very still and you have your answer before she can even speak it.

 _ **“WHY?!”**_ you growl out and it’s enraged and horrified and utterly broken… Knocking out a hostage for transport is one thing, but knocking out your co-worker in a safe house is something entirely different and now that you know how she… feels… about you… you can’t think of one damn reason for it that you can stomach.

Her face is stricken and her eyes go wide when she registers your reaction. “ ** _No!_** (y/n) No! No! Nonononono! It was nothing like that I swear, I SWEAR! I would never, sweetheart. I would never.”

“Well then what the fuck was it like, Natalia?!” you scream.

You can see the name hit her like a physical blow, but she recovers from it quickly and rushes to explain.

“ _I have nightmares_!” she exclaims pleadingly, desperately.

“…What?”, you demand. What does that have to do with anything?

She takes a deep breath and steadies herself, continuing slower and more measured now that she knows you’re listening. “ I have nightmares. I mean, I have nightmares almost every night, but when I’m in Russia they tend to be… no, are always, … particularly violent… I didn’t… I didn’t want you waking up to me screaming and thrashing around and trying to wake me up, I’m not safe when I’m like that, I broke Clint’s nose once. I just wanted to make sure you slept through them.”

“That is… wow.” You can’t believe what you’re hearing. “That is completely fucking _insane_ , Natasha. You have bad dreams so you drugged me?” You know you’re being intentionally dismissive and cruel, you really can’t even imagine the horrible things you’re sure she sees at night, but you’re angry and you’re aiming to hurt right now. You’ve lived with this little uncertainty for almost two years. “You could have just said, ‘Hey, I have nightmares, if I look like I’m having an exorcism don’t wake me up because I’ll literally break your face, goodnight.’”

She looks away and down and crosses her arms muttering out, “It’s not something I like to talk about.”

“So you go with roofies over warnings? That’s _**insane**_. You know that’s insane, right?”

She looks like she’s actually contemplating that pretty intensely. Her brow is furrowed and she’s biting her lip raw before she speaks slowly like the thoughts are just now coming to her as she’s saying them, like she’s never really thought about them before.

“At the time… it didn’t feel insane to me. It just felt like another part of the mission.” She looks up and you and gives you a helpless kind of shrug. “I realize… now… that, yes that is… not normal or appropriate behavior.”

You can’t help it. You start laughing. It starts as a little giggle in the back of your throat and grows until it’s something uncontrollable and hysterical. Your life flew past normal and appropriate years ago and what she did was galaxies far far away from that, but she really does look contrite and… what a sad way to see the world for so long, the people around you just a means to an end, pawns you can manipulate to achieve your goals without guilt.

You realize you’ve completely missed something she’s said to you and you calm yourself down enough to ask her to repeat herself.

“I’m sorry,” she repeats. “Truly.”

You regard her critically for a moment. “Never again. Do you understand me? Never again, I will find a way to kill you.”

“I know you would.”

You fall back into the couch, utterly exhausted as the adrenaline starts to leak from your body and you’re ready to move on until…

“Wait. Did you hold me that night?” You prop yourself back up on your elbows and stare her down.

“You were shivering. We’d already gotten so cold that night and sedatives…”

“Yeah, yeah, lower your blood pressure and your body temperature, I know.” You fall back into the couch. “You just have an answer for everything, don’t you?”

It’s quiet for a while, both of you calming down after that intense exchange and it’s almost peaceful, until she breaks the reprieve.

“I didn’t have any that night, you know?”

You look over at her and raise your eyebrows to say, “no, I don’t know.”

“I didn’t have any nightmares that night. For the first time in… ever in Russia, and I can’t remember before then. I didn’t have a single nightmare. I slept through the night.”

Ah. Another piece of the puzzle. You decide not to comment on the fact that you very much doubt you function as a human dream catcher, and you let the topic die. There’s nothing else to say about that night and it actually feels like a relief to have such a -psychotic, yes - but ultimately benign resolution after two years of uncertainty. Of course you’d rather you’d been wrong about the whole thing, but these days you’ll take the happiest endings you can get.

“So…” You begin, “What happens now?”

She looks like she’s not sure which “now” you’re referring to, which in her defense could be one of several, it’s been sort of an action packed night and there are a lot of possible roads in front of you both, so you clarify.

“You’ve made it… _dramatically_ clear that you want me. I need you, so it looks like you have me. What happens now? Where do we go from here? What… what is it you want from me, exactly?”

**_And do I need more vodka for that conversation?_ **

Natasha sits back up, her pragmatic demeanor from earlier in the evening seemingly back in place. “Well, there are some more official processes we have to go through with my claim on you at the NWO. We’ll need to go in next week, fill out some paperwork, sign a few things, get your fingerprints, DNA, blood samples and all that.”

“Don’t they have all of that from my SHIELD files?”

“No… _you_ wiped out all of the SHIELD personnel files.”

**_Haha, Oh yeah. I forgot about that._ **

“You’ll also need to… do a debriefing.”

**_What?_ **

“…With Wanda.”

“No.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, it’s not optional. I’ve already talked to her about it, she knows you’re coming, she’s going to go so, so easy.”

“But she’ll still report. Whatever she sees she’s still going to report it and what I know will get more of my friends killed.” Can the hits just not keep coming. This is the 4th time tonight you’ve thought you had a handle on this situation and the rug was immediately swept out from under you.

“I won’t do it.”

“ **Yes**. _You will_.”

You whip your head around to face her. The stern eyes and icy voice are back.

“We will go to the NWO on Wednesday. You will do your labs, sign your papers, take your pledge, and you will debrief with Wanda, who will be very very gentle with you. Otherwise, dozens of superpowered NWO agents will bust down this door, render us unconscious, during which time you will still go through a “debrief” with Wanda, and then they will kill us both. Do. You. Understand?”

And shit, you’re crying again. You want to be brave and noble. You want to demand that she kill you now because you would sooner die than sell out your friends. That’s the right thing to do. That’s what Ryan would do… but you don’t want to die… you want… you want…

“Can I see my family?” you sob out.

The Black Widow disappears and suddenly Natasha is right next to you looking for all the world like she wants to sob too. She looks like she’s about to hug you then thinks better of it, and you’re weak and scared and loopy with exhaustion, and so so sad. “No,” you tell her. “It’s ok. It’s ok, you can.”

She wastes no time gathering you up in her arms, resting her head on yours while you cry into her collarbone.

“Of course. Of course you can see your family, sweetheart.”

Despite everything, your heart soars at hearing this. You haven’t seen them in so long and you miss them so much and this whole last year you had no way to communicate with them, no way to make sure they were ok or let them know you were ok. You don’t even know where they are.

You pull back from her a little so you can look up into her face. She uses the sleeve of her hoodie to wipe away some of your tears. “When? When can I go see them?”

“As soon as your registration is done with the NWO we can go see them whenever you want. My claim on you extends to them – they were never rebels. You won’t be putting them in any danger. They’re all safe.”

She’s been keeping tabs on them.

“Where are they?”

“Long Island, mostly. Your oldest brother and his wife are just down in Red Brick. They’re all in Utopias, but they’re all ok. All of them.”

You lean your head back on her chest and let her hold you, let her play with your hair and kiss the crown of your head. You have this nagging suspicion that…

“Did you have anything to do with that? Keeping them all safe while I was underground?”

She just hums. “I told you I wanted to take care of you. That means taking care of them too.”

“Have you… have you met them?”

“Not yet. I’ve been pulling strings from behind the curtains, so you’ll have to do the introductions.”

Your mother is going to hate Natasha.

Your eyes snap open and your head jerks back. You didn’t realize you’d fallen asleep sitting up.

“Okay,” she says quietly into your hair. “I think that’s enough for tonight. We can talk more about anything you want to in the morning, but let’s put a pin in it for now and go to bed.”

You extract yourself from her and stand from the couch, making note of the time on the clock above the stove - 3:28am. You’d gotten on this emotional roller coaster just past 8:30. You’re drained and fuzzy and you feel new weights settling in where old ones had fallen away.

You let her lead you back to the bedroom with her arm around your waist and tuck you back into the bed you’d hurled yourself backwards out of earlier that day.

Funny how somewhere you were desperate to escape from less than 12 hours ago is the only place you want to be now.

You feel her climb in beside you and right before you succumb to unconsciousness you ask her quietly, “Natasha?”

“Hmm, baby?”

“Can I have a dog?”

She runs her thumb across your eyebrow and kisses your temple and tells you, “You can have absolutely anything you want.”

And you’re out.


	5. Hangover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You have a lot to reckon with in the cold light of day.

_Smokey red energy lights up a world map like homing beacons and then suddenly you’re on the ground, holding the hands of faceless men in black uniforms, leading them down these magic roads that only you can see. When you reach your destination and walk through the door which is also glowing and pulsing with that same chaotic red light, your friends are so happy to see you._

_You pull out a gun and shoot them all in the head one by one making eye contact with your next victim as you shoot your current one. The uniformed men are lined up stoically behind you, hands held behind their backs, eyes hidden behind reflective sunglasses in which your friends could watch their final moments reflected if they could only look away from your face._

_Suddenly they’re all dead, and it’s just Ryan standing amongst the carnage, smiling his charming, adoring smile at you. You go to shoot him too, but realize you’re out of bullets so you walk up to him and wrap your hands around his neck. He’s still smiling at you, his eyes alive and happy, and then you’re smiling too. You loosen your hands and go to take them away when another set of hands comes up and covers yours, wrapping your own back tightly around Ryan’s neck._

_Natasha is pressed up close behind you, her hands covering yours and squeezing lightly. “No, please. I don’t want to,” you beg._

_She tsks in your ear and murmurs softly, “It’s ok. It’s just a nightmare. I have nightmares too. I would never, sweetheart. I would never.” She clutches your hands tightly in hers and twists them hard. Ryan’s neck snaps between your joint hands like a twig._

You bolt upright in bed, heart beating a million miles and minute and the feeling of hot bile creeping up your throat. It’s not that you’re unaccustomed to waking up guilt ridden and feeling like shit, but the throb in your head and the ache in your chest aren’t going to be fixed with pancakes and apology texts today. 

You’re alone when you wake up, which you’re grateful for. The light coming in through the East facing windows looks high and there’s no clock that you can see but you’re assuming it’s late morning, maybe even early afternoon. Whatever time it is, it’s the longest you’ve slept in over a year… granted you weren’t being drugged and kidnapped across continents.

You’re not really sure what to do with yourself. Honestly in the cold light of day, you're embarrassed after your little break down with Natasha last night. You try and cut yourself some slack. You’re in an impossible situation but you definitely could have composed yourself better. Did you really ask her for a dog? Jesus Christ, (y/n). 

You stay in bed for a while letting your anxiety build until you figure you can’t put off the inevitable any longer. You decide your best course of action for today is to just follow Natasha’s lead. It’s the only course of action you have because after everything that happened last night, you have no idea how to behave today. 

You get out of bed, not bothering to change out of your pajamas, and walk down the hall to find Natasha in the kitchen… cooking pancakes… in an apron. Great. You’re just gonna throw out the whole damn play book.

She hears you coming because of course she does and she turns to smile at you. “There’s coffee in the pot,” is all she says before she turns back to the stove. 

And oh God have you missed coffee. It was a rare luxury when you were on the run. You mostly had to make due with weak tea and the occasional sugary soda heisted from a gas station. It almost feels like cheating how easy it is to pour the hot, rich coffee into a mug and know there’s more there if you want it and you can have it again tomorrow. 

You lean against the counter awkwardly clutching your mug to your chest when Natasha turns to you again. “Sit,” she gestures to the stools at the kitchen island. “These are almost done.”

Less than a minute after you’ve sat down, Natasha comes up from behind and places a large stack of pancakes in front of you, then wraps her arm around your middle and leans down to leave a lingering kiss to the top of your head. “ _Well_ ,” you think, “ _this is what I get for asking for a hug and crying for my mom.”_

The pancakes really do smell good and you are starving, so you go to tuck in. They are the most perfect pancakes you have ever seen. Round, fluffy, golden, uniform…

_Your stove is on fire. Your stove is on literal fire. Ryan will be home in 5 minutes and you have set the stove on fire. The door to your apartments comes flying open and your panicked looking boyfriend rushes in. “(Y/n)?! Are you ok?! There’s smoke all the way down the hall, what is going…_

_He trails off seeing you standing there, panicky wide eyes, frying pan in one hand, covered in flour, and pancake batter across most of the surface area in your small studio. You managed to smother the fire, but you are down a couple dishtowels._

_“Don’t…,” you start. But he already has. “Ryan don’t laugh at me! I was trying to surprise you for your birthday! Breakfast for dinner!”_

_He walks over and picks up one of the blackened misshapen lumps you were trying to pass off as pancakes and continues cracking up at your failure. “Looks GREAT, Babe!” He teases before taking a huge bite and immediately spitting it out. The middle is completely raw._

_You set down the flying pan, covering your eyes with your flour covered hands and groaning. He pulls your hands away from your eyes, kisses the end of your nose and hugs you to him, still laughing into your hair._

_“How about I help you clean this up, and then you can_ **_buy_ ** _me pancakes for dinner? Deal?”_

_You pull away and give him a scrunchy little pout, “Deal.”_

_He walks over to begin wiping up the counter by the sink, and picks up the bottles of champagne and orange juice you’d set out. “Hey look, Babe, you didn’t burn the mimosas!”_

_“Oh fuck you!”_

_“Hell yeah! Later, it’s my birthday!”_

You’re pulled back into the present with Natasha’s hand rubbing up and down your arm. “You ok? Where’d you go?”

You blink a few times, trying to shake off the memory and smile weakly at her. “I’m ok. Just still a little tired I think. Probably need some more coffee. These look great, thank you, I’m starving.” You start to eat but the pancakes taste like ash in your mouth and you wonder if that’s what yours had tasted like to Ryan. 

You wander into the living room while Natasha cleans up from breakfast. You thought about offering to help, but if these early days with her are going to be about setting precedents, dishes are one you’d rather skip. 

You walk over to the huge windows and peer outside. It’s a beautiful day but it’s eerily still. There is no boat traffic on the Hudson, no people on the bike and jogging paths along the river, and very few cars moving down streets that should be gridlocked. 

There is very little freedom of movement under the New World Order. Most people are only allowed to move about for essential travel and have to scan in and out of their pre-approved destinations via NWO tracking bracelets that every citizen wears. You hadn’t thought about it and Natasha hasn’t mentioned it, but you’re assuming you’ll be receiving one of those bracelets during your field trip to the NWO tomorrow. But no worries, you’ve successfully hacked and short-circuited dozens of those bracelets, you’ll be able to get yours offline when the time is right. 

You stiffen and jump when two strong arms wrap around you from behind. You spin around startled in Natasha’s grasp and she looks… disappointed. “Right.” She sighs out. I guess we should finish our conversation from last night.” 

You glance over to the coffee table…

“I put it away, (y/n).” Right. 

You go over to sit back on the couch and she gives you more distance than she did last night, which you’re grateful for. 

“So,” she begins, “I’m guessing that you are having second thoughts about the dog.” She levels you with a mocking look.

“I… it’s just that...we don’t have a … yard… here…” you trail off lamely, and she cuts you off before you can embarrass yourself further. 

“It’s fine. Last night was a lot. You were tired and overwhelmed and drunker than I think you realized. I was hopeful, but I wasn’t expecting you to just settle in and accept this situation with me in a day. I know you better than that.”

_**How do you know me? You should literally only know I don’t like being cold or getting shot. How long have you been watching me, Natasha?** _

You just nod slowly at her.

“So you asked me last night what I wanted from you, and honestly, you’ve already seen a lot of it.” You just give her a totally lost look before literally glancing all around the apartment for any clues. She laughs a little at your obliviousness before she continues. “You know I want to protect you and take care of you and make sure that you have everything you need and want. But I also told you I wanted you close to me and I mean that. I want to sleep next to you and eat meals with you and be able to be affectionate with you.”

Oh my God. You want to crawl into the couch cushions and die. This is the most cringe conversation you have ever been subjected to including the time you had to call your dad about an insurance hang up with your birth control pills. How is she just able to … say all that with a straight face? 

She doesn’t seem to feel any kind of the embarrassment at all. Gone is the shyness from last night when she told you about coming back for you before SHIELD fell and wanting to whisk you away safely into the clutches of the NWO. And you remember now who she is. Who you’re dealing with. This is the Black Widow and she is the best liar on earth. 

You’re an idiot. She showed you at least 6 personalities in the span of 8 hours yesterday and she made you believe them all. Whatever ground you thought you had with her, you don’t. You can show up to this negotiation, but you don’t have anything to leverage. 

Still, you have to try. “So, you’re saying you want a relationship with me. Natasha, my boyfriend died 2 days ago. You were there.” 

She shakes her head at you, “No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m not saying I _don’t_ want that with you, but only when you want it too. For now I just want what I told you. I want to take care of you and I want to be physically close to you. I’d also like it if you’d talk to me about what you’re thinking and feeling and let me try and help you.”

Did she just… Oh my God she’s never been in a relationship before. You close your eyes for a minute to shake off your exasperation and mortification before you pinch the bridge of your nose and explain to her, “Natasha, that is a relationship. What you just described is a relationship just minus the sex. And I can’t… I can’t do that **_(with you)_** right now _**(ever)**_. 

“Try.”

**_What?_ **

“What?”

“Try. You don’t even have to do anything on your end, just don’t flinch away when I touch you. I don’t see why you’re making it such a big deal. I know you’re attracted to me, I clocked that within the first 15 seconds of meeting you in Coulson’s office that day.” 

“Attraction and intimacy are not the same things, Natasha!” you screech. She looks utterly lost and confused at that. How emotionally illiterate do you have to be not to understand that?

_**Probably as emotionally illiterate as a child assassin raised to believe all love was a manipulation tactic. Oh.** _

“What happens if I don’t? What happens if I push you away and fight you off and hurl insults at you? What are you gonna do?” That might have been stupid. She’s your only access to your family. She could keep you from them. Or worse. 

You’re about to take it back and give her whatever she wants because you will not risk your family.

But she completely deflates. All her stoic bravado seems to leak out of her and she drops her head in her hands in defeat. When she finally looks up at you again she’s… crying? What the fuck? What is going on here? Who the hell is this woman?”

“Nothing,” she sniffs. “Nothing happens. I’m sorry. I think I really messed this up. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to do any of this. I just know that I care about you so, so much and I want you.”

_**FUCK!**_

“Who are you?” you ask her helplessly.

“I don’t know.” she murmurs sadly in reply. You think that, at least, might be the truth. 

But you cannot get your feet on solid ground with her. You have no idea what’s an act and what’s real and if you can’t tell then you can’t react right to anything. 

So if she’s going to be all United States of Tasha and make it impossible for you to pin down one personality, your only choice is to only give her one option on who she’s dealing with with you. If you stay consistent, she’ll have to meet you with some kind of consistency, and you need her to be consistently sympathetic to you.

So you’re going with understanding, compassionate, and patient. Reluctant, but not repulsed- just grieving and scared and adjusting to a new situation. Show her that you might not know it yet, but the seeds of what she wants from you are already planted, she just needs to nurture them - go slow with you. **_Trust you._** After all, you’re so well-intentioned and naïve. 

Mind made up, you stand up from the couch. She looks resigned to the fact that you’re about to walk away from her, but instead you go and sit beside her and pull her into a sideways hug. She’s stiff as a board at first, eyes opened wide in surprise, but she quickly melts into your side wrapping both her arms around your middle, and pulling you tightly to her. 

It’s total overkill and you fight the urge to pat her back and say “there, there.”

Instead you say, “Look, I get that this is hard for you, this is a really weird situation for me too and I don’t think either of us really knows how to act here. I don’t have a reason to be upset with you, Natasha, you are quite literally the reason I’m alive, and I don’t want to be cruel and make you think that being close to you is upsetting to me, it’s not. I just don’t think you realize how much you’re asking for, and how overwhelming that is for me right now. I just lost the person I slept next to and ate my meals with and gave my affection to for almost 5 years. It’s not a space somebody else can just slip into right away, it’s too raw.”

Her head is on your shoulder and she’s not looking at you, but her breathing is slow and you can tell she’s listening very, very carefully. 

“But… the way I see things now, we’re going to be together for the foreseeable future, at least if I want to keep living, which I do. This is our home, right? There’s only one bed, so we will be sleeping next to each other, and I’m ok with that, really, just some nights I might need to be alone with everything and I might come sleep out here, and I need you to just let me do that when I need to do that, ok?” 

She hesitates, but nods slowly against your shoulder. 

“Good. And I assume we’ll be eating most of our meals together. I can’t cook for shit and I don’t have any money, and I don’t think I’m even allowed to walk out that door without you under penalty of death, so food is kind of on you.” You shrug and you can feel her laugh a little.

“And I don’t mind physical affection, and I will try and be as patient with it as I can, but I’m not going to be ok with it all the time, so if I tell you I need some space just give it to me, alright? It won’t be forever. And if you’re not sure if it’s ok to touch me, just ask.”

She slowly extracts herself from you, sitting up and running a hand through her hair before looking over and giving you a shaky smile. “I think I can live with all that.”

You smile back at her. “Good. We can be friends, Natasha. This is going to be really awful for both of us if we can’t be, but friendships take time too, just like any other relationship. So let’s just start with the basics.”

“What are the basics?”

“For starters, do you have, like, nail polish? I haven’t had a mani/pedi in over a year and I have a whole Wolverine situation going on. 

She takes your hand in hers and examines your nails closely. “No,” she states. “I work with Wolverine now, his claws are much cleaner.”

“She jokes!” You gasp, as she disappears down the hallway and reemerges with a nail kit. 

It’s… remarkably easy to play nice with Natasha the rest of the afternoon. She does your nails and order’s Thai food for lunch and the awkwardness from earlier dissipates over pad thai and old movies. She’s funny, surprisingly so, or at least whichever personality she’s slipped into for today is, and it’s easy to slip into shallow conversation and waste the day on the couch. 

It’s not until the sun is going down that your mood takes an obvious nose dive. You get quiet and forlorn, missing whole sentence she says and staring out of the windows into the city… where you’ll be going tomorrow to the NWO. To debrief. 

Natasha knows where your head is though, and she reaches over and covers your hand with hers on the couch between you. “Hey,” she says softly, “It has to be done. I’ll be there with you the whole time. It’s one day, and then it’s over and you never have to think about it again.”

It’s a nice sentiment, but you know tomorrow is going to be a day you’ll think about for the rest of your life. All those red lines leading right to your friends…

“I could,” she starts, “I could ask Wanda…”

You do not like where this is going.

“I could ask Wanda if she could… if she could take some of it away. Not your memories,” she rushes to explain, “but some of the pain. The guilt. If you want.” She looks like she very much wants you to say yes to this.

And of course she does, an instant fix to a few layers of your battered heart would probably help open it up a lot faster. Or maybe she really does just want you to feel better. Who knows? You doubt she even does. 

You feel like you should be insulted, but you can’t find it in you. Natasha doesn’t really seem to understand guilt and grief and so how could you explain to her that the only thing worse than feeling it right now would be not feeling it? Your grief is the scar that your love left behind, and your guilt is the proof that you’re still a good person. Losing people, hurting people - it’s all inevitable especially in your world, but if you can lose love without grief or hurt people without guilt, what kind of a person does that make you? You never want to find out for yourself.

So you just flip your hand palm up under her hand, lace your fingers together and tell her, “Thank you, but no.” And the look she gives you says that she might actually understand a little after all.

You sleep fitfully all night, plagued by nightmares of blood red magic hunting down your friends. You watch them die and then wait for the ache in your heart, but it never comes. 


	6. Homecomings

For as foreign and terrifying as the prospect of everything that is about to happen today is, it’s strange that your anxiety is so familiar. 

What the hell are you supposed to wear? 

You’ve never been great with fashion. You’ve always had a certain sense of style but, according to your mother, no decorum.

You know how you like to dress, but you really don’t know how to dress for an occasion. 

And to say the least, this occasion is unprecedented.

You’re standing in the walk-in closet in… Natasha’s room? Your room? The room you share with Natasha?

Later.

But you’re standing there in your underwear staring at your clothes and you have no idea what constitutes an appropriate outfit to wear for a trip to the headquarters of a global tyrannical power that you tried to lead a rebellion against but now one of its senior officers has laid claim to you so you gotta go give them your fingerprints and all the secrets of your failed rebellion that will be pulled from your head without your consent by a _witch_ and probably get a lot of people you care about killed. 

You must have missed that issue of _Vogue._

Natasha walks into the closet. She looks nice. Smart dress suit - black slacks, black blazer over a forest green top and high black heels that you can see the red bottoms peek out of.

Her outfit looks perfect. Her hair looks perfect. She looks perfect. And you’re so far from “ok” you don’t even know where the road to perfect begins. “Hey, the car will be here in about 20 minutes… were you planning on wearing clothes? I don’t want to tell you how to dress but it’s 53 degrees outside, you might be a little chilly in that.”

You know she’s joking, but you look at her earnestly lost and say, “I don’t know what to wear.” Today feels monumental and all of your choices feel like the bend in the creek. 

_“I’m bored. Nothin’s happenin.”_

_“What were you expecting to happen, Lovebug?”_

_“FISH, daddy! You said we were going_ **_fishing_ ** _and there’s no fish.”_

_“Yes there are.”_

_“Where?”_

_“There’s lots of ‘em there around the bend.”_

_“Then why aren’t we fishing there?”_

_“Because the current’s too strong, Lovebug. All the fish over there are too worried ‘bout swimming to take the bait. The ones who choose to come this way, they’ll bite easy.”_

_“But we’ll catch ‘em and cook ‘em and eat ‘em, daddy.”_

_“Exactly, Lovebug. Even when the other stream seams smoother, always keep fighting the current.”_

She gives you an understanding smile and goes to put her arm around you before hesitating and asking, “Can I?” Good. She was listening. 

“Yes, it’s fine.”

Her arm comes around your bare shoulders and she pulls you close, slowly flipping through your hanging clothes. “What’s the last thing you wore when you felt really in control? Felt the most in your element?

“My SHIELD catsuit.”

“Oh baby, you know it can’t be that. Before that?”

You think back. What was the last thing you were wearing when you felt badass?

“My junior year thesis presentation on the universal wormholes in firewalls.” You pull away from her and flip quickly through your clothing pulling out a pair of dark blue jeans and a black blazer before walking out of the closet and going over to the dresser, digging through the drawers until you find your baby blue t-shirt with a graphic of a USB drive on it. 

It says “Back That Thang Up”, and your brother Justin gave it to you in high school after your laptop died about two paragraphs away from finishing a history paper. He had mocked you relentlessly for the absolute shit fit you threw and angry tears you’d cried while you re-wrote the whole thing on his computer. But when you got home from school the next day, he gave you that t-shirt and a refurbished old laptop of his, and he told you you’d always have back-up. The shirt makes you feel supported and loved down to the fiber of who you are. 

You finish off your outfit with a pair of black ankle boots and the open Tiffany heart necklace your dad gave you for graduation _(and as creepy as it is, you really are grateful that Natasha saved all of your things for you)._ You’re wrapping your hair up into a tight bun on top of your head in the bathroom mirror when Natasha comes up behind you again. “Ok, it’s time to go.” You meet her eyes in the mirror and she smiles gently at you, both of her hands coming up to rest on your upper arms. “You look beautiful.” She gives a quick kiss to the side of your neck before leading you out of the bathroom by the hand. 

It’s unnerving how fast the sleek black town car you’re riding in flies through the Holland Tunnel and the 6 mile drive to the Upper West Side that should have taken over an hour is done in less than 20 minutes, and then you’re stepping out of the car at your destination.

It feels like nostalgia literally punches you in the stomach and then despair steps in to kick you in the ribs as you take in the familiar and yet all too alien campus of your former academy, now the NWO’s New York Headquarters. You’re actually grateful for Natasha’s strong arm around your waist because you’re pretty sure it’s the only thing keeping you from collapsing to leaf-strewn ground. 

This was your school. This was where you honed your hacking and met Ryan and your best friends. This is where you learned what it meant to have a duty and a purpose. 

Now the same place that gave you all of that is going to take it all away.

Natasha comes to a stop at the top of the stairs right before the main entrance and turns you towards her. “Listen, ok, really listen.” She’s looking at you with a new kind of intensity. She almost seems scared. “No matter what happens in here, you cannot act out. Do you understand? I can’t protect you if you do. This is as much a test for me as it is for you. Do not speak to anyone unless you are directly asked a question. Do not protest or oppose anything that happens, no matter what it is. Best case scenario, it happens anyways. Worst case scenario, they kill you on the spot. I really need you to understand this right now, (y/n).”

Her eyes are pleading and desperate and the thing is… you ** _do_** understand, and you also understand why she’s worried. It’s in your nature to question, to fight, to rebel. Honestly it’s in your nature to be difficult just for the sake of it. More than one teacher had made note on a report card about your authority issues. 

But you get it, she’s right. Nothing good or productive will come from insubordination today. You’re just going to have to bite this bullet.

“I understand,” you tell her. “I promise I do. I will be smart today, Natasha, I swear. I don’t want to die…” you hesitate, “... and I don’t want you to die either. I’ll be good.”

She nods once and smiles at you, pulling you into a quick hug and kissing the top of your head, before resuming her earlier position with her arm around your waist. “Ok. Let’s go.”

You’re walking down long, familiar corridors, keeping your head and eyes lowered like Natasha had said when you hear them gasp out ,“No.”

Your head shoots up. Maria Hill is standing in front of you with wide, horrified eyes darting back and forth between your face and Natasha’s hand on your hip. 

Your mouth falls open and you go to speak when Natasha’s grip tightens painfully on your side. 

“Hill,” Natasha says in greeting, but it sounds much more like a warning. 

“Commander Romanoff,” she answers, not taking her eyes off you. 

**_Commander?_ **

“Maria, you know what happens.”

Maria seems to recompose herself, before nodding her head and saying, “Of course,” and giving you one last sideways glance then continuing past you down the corridor in the opposite direction. 

“Wha..” you start.

“Later,” Natasha cuts you off. “Later, I promise, but not now.”

You’re led into an office that you think used to be the Bionics Department faculty lounge, and sat in one of two comfortable chairs facing an executive desk. When he enters through the back door of the office, the scene is so familiar you can’t help being thrown back.

_“I understand that this is unusual and against protocol, but Recruit (Y/L/N) is the most eligible asset we can identify for the efficiency and speed that is required to hack into this database. You’re looking at an 11 minute time window before the system self destructs and takes all the data with it.” He calmly explains._

_You know you must look terrified. ‘Timed Hack? Essential Data? HYDRA? Russia?’ The words play on a loop in your mind and you can’t make sense of them. ‘Russia?’ The farthest you’d ever been from America was Cancun and that was its own special kind of disaster._

_Director Coulson continues, “Agent Romanoff is familiar with this base and its protocols. I trust that she will be able to safely guide you through it to a successful mission.” His smile grows kinder at your bewildered face. “You’re in good hands, Recruit (Y/L/N). She’ll take care of you.”_

You snap back to the present when a familiar, bubbly rage blooms in your chest at seeing Phil Coulson step in and sit behind that pretty executive desk. Daisy was one of the first friends you lost to this fight. You wonder if he knows he helped kill her. You wonder if he cares. 

But Natasha’s hand has found your clenched fist and is holding it firmly, stroking a comforting thumb along your knuckles until you relax slightly. You have to stay calm. You don’t want to die. 

“Commander Romanoff, (y/n),” He greats. 

“ _I used to have a title_ ,” you think petulantly. “ _Even if it was only ‘Recruit._ ’”

But your expression stays neutral and your posture stays stoic and you wait for him to continue. 

“Right,” he says, “Let’s get down to business. First things first -- contracts.” He pulls out two, thick stacks of paper tabbed with red and yellow markers and sits one down in front of you and the other in front of Natahsa. “Basic contracts. Natasha, yours assumes responsibility for a rogue combatant of the Order. (Y/n), yours surrenders your agency to your claimant. Both pledge loyalty to the Order. I’ll need signatures on the red tabs, and initials on the yellow.”

_“Both of you sign here... Great. Then initial here.... Great. And then sign and initial here… Perfect.” A set of keys are dropped into your hand. “Welcome to your new home! Have fun, kids.”_

You blink back into the present. Your contract is fully signed in front of you and Phil scoops it up along with Natasha’s and hands it to a secretary who appeared out of nowhere. 

“Okay,” he gives you that same, less than reassuring smile. “Let’s move on to the lab.”

The lab is easy enough. They take your height, weight, and temperature. They pull blood from your arm and swab your mouth and make you pee in a cup. 

It is annoying as all shit when they talk to Natasha like you’re not there, but you stay composed and listen. 

“Everything looks more or less ok, Commander Romanoff,” the lab tech reports over your head. “She’s underweight, but not severely, and she has an iron deficiency, but we’ve prescribed supplements for that. There’s some… obvious signs of physical trauma, but nothing that won’t heal on its own if she rests. All in all, I’d say she’s in good shape.”

As indignant as you feel, it is kind of nice to know you’re physically fine. You haven’t been to a doctor in over a year and you’ve put your body through the extremes, so if anything, at least you’ve made it out with your health. 

Natasha seems relieved too. Running her hand up and down your non- bandaged arm. 

“Ok,” the tech continues. “One last thing.” He walks over to the opposite side of the room and fiddles with something on a lab table. He comes back holding...

**_NO!_ **

Natasha speaks before you can. “I don’t remember hearing anything about this. I don’t think it’s necessary. A bracelet will be sufficient.”

The lab tech at least has the good sense to look afraid. “I’m sorry, ma’am. Orders from the top.”

You look at her pleadingly, but she just gives you a sad, lost look that says, “What can I do?”

“I understand. Continue.” She speaks in monotone.

You expect it to hurt more, but you barely feel a pinch when the tracking device is implanted into your arm. 

And then you’re being led by Natasha with her hand on your shoulder down another long corridor to your debrief with Wanda.

You were expecting an interrogation room - something hard and concrete walls and metal table and chairs and a grimy two way mirror.

Instead you’re led into a very comfortable office with a plush sofa and zen water feature and lots of hanging plants in the windows.

It reminds you of your therapist’s office in middle school just minus the “feelings” posters and lollipops. 

Natasha guides you to sit back on the comfortable couch and it’s barely a wait at all before Wanda Maximoff walks in. 

“Hello (y/n), Nat,” she greets in her thick Sokovian accent. 

“ ** _It’s strange_** ,” you register from somewhere long ago. “ _ **Her accent didn’t used to he that heavy.”**_

She’s as direct as she is kind when she says, “We all know why we’re here so we might as well begin.” But then for the first time today, someone besides Natasha addresses you directly. “(Y/N), this is a very intimate process. Do you wish to be alone for it? Natasha’s presence is not required.”

You feel Natasha stiffen beside you and her grip goes tight on your hand, but she doesn’t comment.

“Will…,” you begin, “Can she see what you’re seeing? Will she be able to see into my mind too if she’s here?” you ask Wanda.

“No.” Wanda assures. “I am the only one who will be able to see into you. No one else will know what I don’t tell them.” There is something in her tone that you know she wants you to pay attention to. 

“Ok,” you concede. “Natasha can stay.” You decided to lay it on a little thick and look over at her with big, wide eyes. “I want her to stay.” 

She brings up your joint hands and kisses the back of your knuckles. Wanda watches this all with a calculating gaze before clearing her throat and saying, “Ok, let’s begin.”

She approaches you slowly and rests the fingertips of both her hands on either side of your temple.

Suddenly you’re ripped from the room you were just in. Natasha is gone and so is the comfortable office and the best way you can think to describe what’s happening to you is like you’re flying through a microfilm of your whole life. 

You see flashes of so much - your childhood whooshing by you - birthday parties and swim meets and spelling bees - but nothing lasts more than half a second. 

Until Wanda seems to find what she was scrolling for. Your memories slow as you get to SHIELD. You see your recruitment meeting and the subsequent conversation with your parents. You see your dorm room on the first day and meeting your roommate Kenisha and hitting an unsuspecting stranger in the back of the head with a snowball who would turn out to be...

Your memories speed up again. Flying through your brain in yellowed images. 

And now you’re stuffing any relevant thing you can think of into an old, beat up backpack. 

“There’s a group,” Ryan is saying. “Out of Atlanta. We can stay with them for a while, and they’ll help us know where to go next. We need to move now while we can still move.”

Then you’re getting off the MARTA train in East Point and a warm, young couple is greeting you. Her accent is posh British and his accent is trash Scottish but you can tell before you know their names that they are in love. 

And then it all pulls into hyper focus. Names and locations, codes and safehouses and all you can do is plead in your mind as loud and as focused as you are able. 

_**“Please, Wanda. Please don’t make me kill my friends. We just wanted to change the world.”** _

And suddenly everything goes very, very still in your head before you are harshly snapped back into reality. 

When you come to, it’s not just Wanda, Natasha, and you in the office anymore. 

Rumlow is there too. 

“Piece of treacherous shit,” you think. But it makes sense that he would have found his place in the NWO.

Wanda clears her throat. “I am ready to give my report.” 

You try to brace yourself, but how do you brace for the death sentences of your friends?

“This has not been a productive reading. She knows almost nothing that we did not already gather from the interrogation and reading of her three captured comrades - the only new information I found was about the cell in Atlanta…”

_**No, Please don’t.** _

“But we already know that cell is still active and has moved far outside the city. She was unaware of that, and does not know where they’ve gone. 

_**What? Yes I do they’re in… oh my god.** _

“The only other information she has that we did not pull from her comrades is a code line, but it is the same code line we pulled from Maria Hill, so there is no need to translate it from her head again.” Wanda gives you an uninterested look… but there is something in her eyes…

“She poses no risk. She is scared and sad and desperate for comfort. Let Natasha keep her as a little pet. She is no threat.” With that, Wanda turns and leaves out of the office door.

You barely have time to bask in your relief before Rumlow plants himself down on the foot stool right in front of where Natasha and you are sat on the couch. He’s leaned forward, shit eating grin on his smug face. 

“Alright Romanoff,” he leers at you, “It appears she’s all yours.”

Natasha doesn't take the bait. Instead she stays very calm and says, “I need an inter-district mobility pass for her.”

“Why?” he scoffs, “You got her here today with no problems.”

“I’m not going to take an NWO transport everywhere I go, Brock,” she states measuredly. “I live in New Jersey and work in New York, not to mention the fact that you send me on missions all over the world at a moment’s notice and I don’t feel comfortable leaving her home alone yet. I’m pretty sure she could make a two way radio out of the tv remote and a blow-dryer if given the time.”

**_Bitch, maybe._ **

“... Fine.” He concedes. “We can issue her a **_limited_** inter-district mobility card between New Jersey and New York. If you need to take her farther than that, you need to fill out the paperwork and go through the appropriate channels. It shouldn’t be a problem though, right Romanoff? You’ve, for some strange reason, asked to be pulled out of all non-local operations for an open-ended amount of time.” He leans back and crosses his arms, smirking smugly at Natasha. 

“Fine. That’s fine.” she answers. “But I also want an open mobility card for her within her own district.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Fine,” Natasha grits out through clenched teeth. “A **_chaperoned_** open mobility card within her own district. Jesus, Rumlow, she’s chipped. How far do you think she’ll go?”

He fixes Natasha with a knowing stare, “I think she’d go as far as you’d let her, Agent- 

“Commander.”

“...Commander Romanoff. But fine. She can have a chaperoned district mobility card, but if she gets more than 25 feet away from you, there will be problems.”

“Understood.”

“Good. You should receive both of those in about two weeks. Now go on then, **_Widow_** ,” he mocks. “Take your little fly home.” 

You don’t know how to describe what you’re feeling when you step back out through the front doors of the academy... you mean NWO headquarters. 

You’re biggest feeling in relief. Wanda covered for you. You’re not sure why she did it, but your friends are safe from you for now. 

You’re next is anger (but hey, anger being your number 2 emotion is actually growth for you). You’re pissed as shit about the chip in your arm. You’re pretty sure you can still disarm it, but it’s going to hurt a hell of a lot more now. You want to be mad at Natasha about it. She seems like the easiest target for your anger, but you think she’s actually pretty mad about it too, and using her as your punching bag has no benefit, plus you want to know about Maria and Natasha is the only one who can tell you what happened there.

Lastly, you just feel tired. It’s draining to hold yourself together like you just did given the circumstances and you actually find yourself desperate to go back to her comfortable apartment in New Jersey. 

You’re piled into the backseat of the same black town car, pulling out of the Academy/NWO, shamelessly leaning into Natasha for comfort. “Do you want anything,” she asks as her fingers slowly comb through your hair, your tight bun from earlier having been completely dismantled. “Before we leave the city I mean,” she continues. “Is there anything you want?” 

You open your mouth to say no. You just want to go home and take a shower and sleep.

“Bubble tea.” is what you end up saying. “I want a mango slush with popping strawberry boba and lychee jelly.”

You have a large Vivi Bubble in your hands before you can even process what you’ve asked for. 

Walking back into Natasha’s apartment feels like a relief you never could have fathomed. 

“You’re not hungry?” she asks as you finish off your bubble tea and toss the cup into the recycling. 

“No,” You reply. “I’m really tired. I think I just want to take a shower and go to bed.” You hesitate, “Is… that ok.”

She gives you a kind smile. “Of course, sweetheart. Take these though,” she hands you the iron supplements the scared little lab tech had prescribed you earlier. 

You do without complaint and then make your way back into the master bath to wash away the day.

You and Natasha fall into a routine of sorts over the next two weeks.

It’s… homey. She cooks, mostly, and she is surprisingly good at it. Some nights your order take out, but even for **_Commander_** Romanoff, take out can be spotty depending on the demand and mobility of the restaurant and its delivery people.

You watch movies (but never the news. That gets shut down every time you ask.) and do puzzles and play video games. You go on walks by the river, but the empty paths and uniform guards make you uneasy. 

You are a little disappointed that it doesn’t seem like your conversation that first day really took. There’s only one night that you try to sleep on the couch, and it does not go well. 

You start the night out in bed, but you have dreams the whole night. Dreams about Ryan and you keep reaching out for him but every time you touch him his body is too small and too soft and you’re jerked awake only to fall back into the same dream. Every time you touch her instead of him feels like losing him all over again, so you quietly extract yourself from the bed, grab your pillow, and go to sweat it out on the couch for the night.

Only, you’ve probably been on the couch for less than 20 minutes when Natasha comes into the kitchen… for the first time.

You ignore her, at first. She gets water eventually and then makes her way back to the bedroom. You close your eyes and try to fall back to sleep, but before you can, she’s in the kitchen again. 

This happens three more times before you grab your pillow and follow her back into the bedroom. You’re clearly not getting any sleep on the couch, and as soon as you position yourself back in the bed, she wraps an arm around your stomach and spoons you close to her. 

But sleeping arrangements aside, most of those two weeks are good… except… 

She does still get dark a few times. Only in moments when you try and move away from her, even if only in the slightest. She might have heard your plea for space, but she is not accommodating it. 

Still, for the most part, you mesh well together- similar senses of humor and wit allowing for a levity and silliness that you desperately need. 

And almost before you know it, two weeks have gone by and you have your inter-district travel card. 

You can go see your family. 

“Oh my God!” You take in the idyllic scenery and huge estates you’re driving past then look over to her in the driver’s seat, just the smallest amount of awe on your face. “You moved my family to the Hamptons? Can we live in the Hamptons?”

She keeps her eyes on the road, but grins. “I suppose we can get a summer house. A lot of New Yorkers do that.”

You roll your eyes at her good naturedly, “Phsss, you’re not a New Yorker. You are 100% bridge and tunnel.”

Her grin grows and she turns her head to you, lowering her sunglasses and fixing you with a look of faux indignation, “Best damn view of the city though, darling.”

_“Hey, Babe, listen to this one: 1 bedroom 1 ½ bath , high floor in a building with an elevator. $1750/ month with utilities included.” Ryan and you are in your dorm room at the academy. You’re sitting at your desk working on a hacking assignment you’re not even sure you can crack, and Ryan is sprawled out on your bed going through apartment rental listings on Craigslist. You’ve been together for almost 2 years now and you’ve decided you're both old and committed enough to live somewhere that doesn’t require a sock on the door when you want some alone time._

_Both of your roommates are thrilled with this development._

_“Sounds great,” you answer distractedly. “Where is it?”_

_“It has a lobby with a front desk for packages and a rooftop social area with grills and lounge seating.”_

_“Uh-huh. Where is it?”_

_“Basic cable AND wifi are included with the uti--”_

_“Ryan. Where. Is. It.?”_

_“....Newark.”_

_“No.”_

_“(Y/n) it’s two blocks from PATH! We could be in the city in 15 minutes. That’s faster than you can get to the city from most parts of the city!”_

_“I’m not living in New Jersey, Ryan.”_

_“GAWH!” He throws his hands up in frustration and you just turn to laugh at him from your desk chair. “You are a snob about the most random shit, I swear to god.”_

_You shrug. “Real estate and hair care. Where you rest your head and what your head looks like… lots of head stuff,” you give him an exaggerated, teasing wink._

_He snorts out a laugh at you, “You’re a freak.”_

_“Aww, baby, you love being a part of this freakshow…. now find me something in New York.” You turn back to your impossible homework assignment._

_20 minutes later, at the same moment you crack through the encryption, Ryan asks from your bed, “What about Bushwick?”_

_You consider it. “Yeah, I could do Bushwick. How close to the L?”_

_“Not as close as the one in Newark is to....”_

_“I will leave you.”_

_“Close enough to the L.”_

_Five days later you’re lugging all of your things up 6 flights of stairs to your new tiny studio in Bushwick. At one point Ryan grumbles about how Newark has elevators, but when you ask him, “What was that now?” He just playfully shouts, “I LOVE NEW YORK!” from somewhere behind the mattress you’re mostly only pretending to help him carry._

_Later that night, with aching legs and arms and all your shit in boxes strewn haphazardly around your new, small home, the two of you drink straight from a bottle of cheap red wine on the fire escape. You can barely see the top of the Empire State Building in the distance poking out through the boxy buildings of Brooklyn. “So,” Ryan turns to you and asks, “New home. What do you think?”_

_You grin over at him before kissing him soundly and resting your head on his shoulder. “Best view of the whole damn city.”_

“...Maybe not the best,” you respond quietly, turning your head to lean it against the glass of the passenger door window. 

Natasha notices your good mood ebb away as you sink into another bout of nostalgic melancholy. She’s used to this with you by now, expects the times when you’ll get quiet and introverted seemingly out of nowhere. She doesn’t comment, just reaches over and rests her right hand on your knee, her thumb gently stroking back and forth. It’s not… entirely unwelcome.

It’s quiet the rest of the ride, but your mood lifts with the beach air and the thought of seeing your family fills you with an entirely different kind of longing - with something to look forward to. You’re almost vibrating with impatience and excitement by the time she turns the car down a private road off Lily Pond Lane and into the driveway of the home where your family now lives.

And home is too modest a word for what you just pulled up to. This is an estate. You pass tennis courts and a huge manicured lawn with seemingly hundreds of flowerbeds and water fixtures. When you pull up into the large circular driveway in front of the main house and step out of the car, your jaw drops at the sheer enormity of it. You look over at Natasha, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, and she just smirks and shrugs and says, “You have a big family.” 

You remind yourself that you have to be careful in moments like these - moments when it would be so easy to get lost in gratitude and, yes, affection for her that you could lose sight completely. 

The slopes are very slick in Stockholm and you cannot afford to slip, so you rely on an awful but effective method of keeping those feelings in check whenever you get too close to giving into her completely. 

You force yourself to pull up the image of Ryan’s dead eyes and snapped neck and remind yourself that she was sent there to do that to him that night. You know she wasn’t the one to actually end his life, and she says she would have stopped it if she could, but it’s an effective method of control and you feel yourself cool towards her instantly. 

“Plus,” she continues, “It has a guest house so we have somewhere to stay here too.” She grins at you expectantly but you look a little worried.

“Oh… don’t you think it might be a better idea if you took the guest house and I took a spare room or, or shared with my sister? I’m just not sure how it would look to everybody…”

Her eyes flash hard and she grabs you by the wrist and pulls you into her body. “You’re staying with me.”

Right. Easier to cool towards her when she pulls shit like that too. 

But you don’t fight it. There’s no point and the last thing you want is for her to be around your family when she’s like… this. So you appease her as best you can.

“Ok, Tasha. I’m sorry. Of course I’ll stay with you. It’s not that I didn’t want to, I was just worried about aesthetics. It’s hard not to feel like a teenager around your parents, you know? No matter how old you get.” You smile sweetly up at her and instead of pulling away from her grasp you lean in and rest your head on her shoulder. She lets go of your wrist and brings both of her arms up to wrap around you, kissing the top of your head. 

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” she murmurs into your hair. “We’ll just tell them it’s a condition of your Claim, ok? I mean… it technically kind of is.”

You nod underneath her chin and she lets you pull back from her before taking your hand. “Ready?” She asks.

Suddenly you don’t know if you are. You’re about to walk in on your whole family with no warning after being MIA for over a year with a high ranking member of the reason you had to stay away who now kinda… owns you, maybe? 

But your need to be with them is stronger than your fear of their reaction. Plus maybe the whole, “... _**and she’s the one that got you Martha Stewart’s old beach house”**_ thing will soften the blow a little. So you nod your head and walk to the front door, ring the bell and wait, Natasha holding your hand the whole time.


	7. Where the Heart Is

It feels like days but it couldn’t have even been a minute before your mother pulls open the massive front door. The glass she was holding falls from her hand and shatters on the marble floor of the foyer and she freezes at seeing you, taking you in with wide, shocked, unbelieving eyes. 

You want to say something cool like, “ _Hey Mom, miss me?_ ” before strutting into the house and greeting the rest of your family, but seeing her here in front of you alive and safe after everything you’ve been through… all you can do is croak out a pathetic little _“Mommy”_ before you are launching yourself into her arms and sobbing into her neck. 

“Oh my baby, oh my baby you’re ok you’re ok, oh my god, you’re ok,” she repeats like a mantra as she clutches you to her. Soon enough though, your mother spots Natasha over your shoulder and pulls you behind her, hard. 

“Get away from her!” she’s screaming as she lunges to grab an umbrella from the stand behind the door and swings it violently at Natasha’s head over and over again. This is your mother, and she’s trying to fight the Black Widow with an umbrella for you. You cry a little harder. 

Natasha dodges the blows easily enough but she gives you a helpless, annoyed look that screams, _**“Do something!”**_ so you pull yourself together enough to shout, “Mom! MOM! Stop! It’s ok, it’s ok, she saved my life!”

She slowly lowers the umbrella, (but she does not put it down) just as four other sets of feet come pounding into the entranceway. 

“Lisa!” your dad shouts. “Lisa, what is going on…” Your dad, your brothers, and your sister pull up to a quick stop when they see you standing there, your mother between you and the Black Widow, wielding an umbrella. 

“Hey guys,” you give a lame little wave before four bodies are squeezing you tight and as squished as you are, it’s the easiest you’ve been able to breath in a long, long time.

You're sitting in a massive living room with high arching widows that look over a huge patio with a pool and guest house and out to the beach beyond. You’re a little annoyed that as soon as you sit down on the expensive leather couch, Natasha immediately squeezes herself in between you and the arm of the couch in a space obviously not big enough to have been left in invitation. You see your mother notice this, but she doesn’t say anything, instead she just sits down closely on your other side and takes your hand. 

Your dad is next to your mom and the twins Lexi and Justin are in a loveseat to your left while your older brother Zach takes the armchair to the right. 

Justin, as he so often does, breaks the silence first. “Ok, (Y/n), so like, great to have you back but also what the fuck?”

You laugh. It’s what you needed to begin. 

And then you tell them. You tell them everything. You tell them about deciding to leave and join the Resistance. You tell them you’re sorry you ran without letting them know, but it was too dangerous to involve them at all. You tell them about your year on the run and underground, the places you’d been, the things you’d seen and done, the friends you’d made and lost. 

At one point your mother asks quietly from beside you, “Ryan?” You just swallow and shake your head sadly. “Oh honey,” she comforts, wrapping her arm around your shoulders and pulling you into her side. 

And then you get to Natasha. You carefully explain your claim, framing it as though she was an old friend at SHIELD **_“... and she had already taken a bullet for me once”_** who recognized you on a routine mission in Bulgaria and claimed you to keep you alive. 

You think they buy it mostly… until you have to explain that she’s the reason they all live in a mansion in East Hampton now. No one really comments, but you get some very, very incredulous looks, especially from Justin who is staring straight at you with one judgmental eyebrow quirked. 

“Your father and I were at the house,” your mother is saying, “When Order guards showed up at the front door. I was terrified, I was sure it was about you,” she looks over at you, “But they told us we had half an hour to pack our things, that we were being redistricted.” 

She takes a deep breath before continuing. “You had disappeared, Justin and Zach were in the city, Lex was in L.A., and Sean was down in Florida and we couldn’t get a hold of any of you. But then we were being loaded into a black van and brought to this house and handed keys and having our bracelets filled up with more currency than we could ever know what to do with. The next morning your sister and your brothers showed up the same way, and we were so relieved except… except you and Sean were still missing and we had no idea what happened to you. We still have no idea what happened to Sean…” your mother trails off sadly trying very hard to hold back her tears.

Natasha speaks for the first time. “Sean is fine,” she states calmly and every head in the room whips in her direction. “I’m sorry he couldn’t be here too. I did manage to get him and his wife transferred to a Tier Two Utopia in Central Jersey, but given his record, not even I could get him a residency pass for this place. 

Utopias are organized into 5 tiers. 1 being the most comfortable with the nicest amenities and least stringent oversight from the Order. 5 being… you don’t want to be placed in a 5.

At first the idea was a total restructuring of society to reward the “good” people and punish the “bad.” Hedge fund CEOs were made to go live in dilapidating housing projects while special education teachers were moved into their mansions, and people were shuffled around the country based on whatever kind of merit the NWO deemed them to have.

Of course it took no time at all for the system to become corrupted. Your family’s presence here under the orders of Commander Romanoff was proof enough of that. You were decent people, but not one amongst you was saintly. Still, you guess there still must be at least some kind of pretense for who they let into the top of the top neighborhoods. 

Your parents look utterly confused and you share brief, uneasy glances with your siblings. “What on Earth could he have done that would make him entirely ineligible?” Your mother demands. “I mean he was never my most impressive child, but I can’t imagine he’s a criminal.”

Natasha gives you a slightly panicked look like thinks she messed up and she doesn’t know what to say and, sorry Sean, but... you go to sell out your brother, before your other brother beats you to it. 

You’ve all always been close. You’re the youngest and the twins are two years older than you. Zach is three years older than them and there’s only around 1 year and nine months between Zach and Sean, so the 5 of you only span around 7 years, and while you always had your “sibling shit” as your mother liked to call it, you all genuinely like each other and functioned as a well oiled machine when it came to pulling one over on your parents. You were a team.

“Ok Mom,” Zach begins, “So it’s really not a big deal, but Sean does have some minor _MINOR_... felony convictions.”

“WHAT?!” Your mother shrieks.

“Seriously, Mom,” Lexi jumps in. "It’s not that bad, it’s just a few counts of, _totally totally non-violent_ , drug… trafficking.”

Her jaw drops open and her eyes bug out huge before she slowly looks around the room taking in you and your siblings guilty expressions and hunched shoulders.

“You knew?!” She demands. “You ** _ALL_** knew?!”

“Lexi and I paid his bail,” Justin offers. 

“I got him a lawyer.” Zach adds. 

Your mother looks at you expectantly. “...I wrote you guys the postcards from his year abroad in Paris. Honestly you kinda slept on those, they were postmarked from White Plains.” 

Your mother is shaking her head, blinking slowly in disbelief. “He… he didn’t go to Paris?”

“No, Mom,” Justin sighs out. “He went to prison.”

Your dad lets out a barking laugh and then it’s over. You’re all laughing uncontrollably, loud and hysterical and gasping, bent over and clutching your sides with tears streaming down faces. Natasha is watching you all like you are absolutely insane but there is just no way to explain… this is your **_FAMILY._** She brought you home to them.

“You’re all sneaky little shits, all of you and you always have been,” your mother states when she composes herself, leaning back into the couch and looking over at you with love and mirth in her eyes. “I have never given birth to a human child, just 5 sneaky little shits. Justin, Lex, help me make dinner.” You go to follow them to the kitchen and without even turning around your mother says, “Stay out of my Kitchen, (y/n). It used to be Martha Stewart’s, you know.”

Your heart is full and you feel still in a way that you haven’t since even before you joined the Resistance. You’re content right where you are and breathing feels easy and your heartbeat is slow and steady; a soothing reminder that you’re alive, not a pounding warning that you have to fight to stay that way. 

You’re very rarely the one to initiate contact, but tonight when Natasha slips into bed next to you, you don’t hesitate to cuddle up to her, tucking your head under her chin, wrapping your arm around her waist, and tangling your legs together.

And it’s not a manipulation or an appeasement or even a thank you - you do it because you want to, because this time you want to be close to her too. 

She strokes your hair and kisses your forehead before whispering into your hairline, “Are you happy?”

You pause. Happiness has been such a far-away concept to you for such a long time now. It’ll never come free and easy and unbridled like it used to. You used to associate happiness with being carefree and that is something you’ll never be again. 

And no, despite how wonderful today has been, in the bigger scheme of things, you’re still not happy. You’re still far too hurt and sad and angry to be happy, but you think…. You think _maybe_ , just _maybe_ , happiness isn’t some unattainable relic for you. You think maybe someday you could learn to be happy again. A new kind of happy, but still. 

So you dodge the question and just whisper softly into the crook of her neck, “Thank you. Thank you so much for this.”

She pulls back from you a little and repositions herself so that she can look into your eyes, both of your heads resting close on her pillow and her hand coming up to cup your cheek. She just stares at you for a moment, soft and seeking, her thumb gently running back and forth over your jaw before speaking so low it’s almost a whisper. “I would do anything for you. Anything.”

It’s not true. She won’t even let you sleep in a different room, but you understand what she means. You understand how much she thinks she loves you - twisted, and selfish, and possessive as her brand of love is -and you wonder if it would really be the worst thing to just let her?

You know it’s coming, have known its been coming this whole time, and you don’t make any move to pull away when she closes the space between you. The kiss is chaste but firm and it lingers for several long seconds with her hand on your cheek holding you in place. When she finally pulls back, she smiles so brightly at you, and you notice, not for the first time, that she really is devastatingly beautiful. 

You can’t hold her eyes, so you move closer and lay your head back on her chest right over her heart, letting the steady beat lull you to sleep. 

You slip a little. 

You’re a little scared to leave Natasha alone with your mother, although you’re not really sure for whom, but you go and join your siblings to play volleyball on the beach, occasionally glancing over to where your mother and Natasha are sat in beach chairs closer to the house. Their heads are close together and they look like they’re having a very serious conversation. You wonder (worry?) what on Earth they could be talking about, but before you can spiral too far you are very unceremoniously pegged in the head by a volleyball. 

“Heads up, Buttercup!” Lexi taunts you from the other side of the net.

“Asshole!” You pick up the ball and spike it at her as hard as you can. 

It’s an easy night. Whatever was spoken about between your mother and Natasha on the beach that day doesn’t get brought up, and you don’t sense any obvious tension between them. Your dad grills and you make a big salad while Zach and Justin disappear to the store, returning half an hour later with enough booze to render you all unconscious. 

Natasha is giving you a much wider berth than usual, and while you’re surprised about it after last night’s kiss, you’re also glad for it. She seems relaxed as she sits on the opposite side of the fire pit from you, drinking a beer and toasting a marshmallow and occasionally meeting your eyes and smiling softly at you through the flames.

The chilly fall night is filled with food and drinks, reminiscing and good-natured teasing, and a multitude of less than flattering stories from your adolescence.

You’re only partially listening to the conversation flowing around you, so content to sip your drink and lean into your brother’s side and bask in having your family around you safe and (mostly) whole. You think they were on the topic of Justin’s most recent ex-boyfriend when you catch your dad saying, “... and Ryan was the only boy any of you three ever brought around that I didn’t have to worry about stealing my car.”

You feel your breath hitch and your eyes start to itch from something besides the smoke from the fire. An uneasy quiet has fallen over your jovial group and your dad seems to register his mistake. You’d actually gone almost a whole day without thinking about Ryan. **_How could I forget?_**

But Lexi, like she always has for you, swoops in and saves the day… while simultaneously throwing you under a bus.

She snorts out a loud, obnoxious laugh, pulling all eyes away from you. “Daddy, Travis didn’t steal your car, (y/n) did.”

**_“Judas!”_** you hiss out. And just like that the tension is broken and the easy atmosphere from earlier settles back into place.

Your dad looks totally bewildered. “ ** _You_** stole my car?” He looks at you in shock.

“To be fair, Rob,” your mother cuts in, “She brought it back.”

“Wait, **_you_** knew?! She was _**15!**_ ”

“Statute of limitations on that crime has definitely passed, old man,” Justin chimes in in your defense. 

The rest of the evening peters on without incident until you finally separate in the early hours of the morning, saying goodnight to your family and letting Natasha lead you back to the guest house by the hand.

She kisses you again that night, slow and chaste as the one from the night before, before spooning you close to her and leaving soft kisses on your neck and shoulder blades. She smells like smoke from the fire and expensive perfume and you fall asleep easily, peaceful and dreamless.

You don’t want to leave, but Natasha has to go back to the city for work, and so all too soon you’re putting your bags back into the trunk of her car and hugging your family goodbye.

“I’ll bring her back as often as possible,” she promises them. “And I’ll see what I can do about getting chaperoned passes for Sean and his wife to come up for Thanksgiving.”

Your father pats her firmly on the shoulder and your mother takes her hand giving her a stern, but knowing look. “Look out for her,” she demands. 

Natasha clasps your mom’s hand in both of hers and tells her solemnly, “With my life.”

You’re about to climb into the passenger seat when Justin comes up behind you, picking you up and spinning you around and saying, “See you soon, cyberpunk,” while he discreetly slips a folded up piece of paper into your hand. You quickly slip it into the back pocket of your jeans before getting into the car and waving one last goodbye to your family as Natasha drives you both back towards the city.

You didn’t realize that the comfortable office from your debrief with Wanda was **_her_** office, but Natasha leads you back into the same cozy room and instead of setting up and working at her desk, she brings her laptop over to the couch and sits close to you, absentmindedly trailing her fingertips up and down your thigh as she reads through mission reports. You’re trying to be less than obvious about reading over her shoulder, but she just gives you a knowing smirk, and besides, it’s all in code anyways.

You’ve been in the office for less than half an hour when he walks in without knocking. 

“Commander, we need you in mission control to help navigate an asset recon out of… _Hello_ ,” he trails off when he notices you curled up next to Natasha on the couch.

All the good feelings from the last two days leave you at once and you’re angry again. Enraged. **_‘Hello?’_** How dare he? This is his fault. He started this. This isn’t even his fucking planet and he has _**ruined**_ it. You used to have his poster on your wall and pajamas with his insignia on them and oh my _**GOD**_ those cheekbones are literally otherworldly. 

You scowl at him, all curled lips and blatant disdain. “Sup, Superman?... OW!”

Natasha pinches your thigh. Hard. Right, ok so maybe antagonizing the all powerful, immortal leader of an evil global empire isn’t the smartest thing you’ve done all day.

Kal-El just fixes you with a look of faux hospitality. “(Y/n), welcome. I heard you were joining us, so glad to have you on board,” he mocks. “You certainly gave us a hard time in Annapolis last year. Maybe someday those skills will find a more righteous purpose with the Order.” 

Annapolis. Annapolis had been bad ass. 

It was your first major mission with the Resistance, less than 3 weeks after you’d joined up with the team in Atlanta. Daisy and you had worked in tandem to hack a satellite and a power grid, simultaneously deactivating thousands of tracking bracelets and blacking out the whole Northeastern seaboard. Ground teams came in amongst the confusion and darkness and moved as many people as possible north into Canada before the Order was able to get the lights back on and the satellite back up. 

You’d freed thousands and you knew you’d made the right choice in joining. You could fight the Order. You could save the world. 

Of course, it all ended up being for nothing. Canada fell less than a month later and you’ve always had a sinking suspicion that the people you helped cross the border probably ended up paying dearly for it.

Natasha stands, clearly wanting this interaction to end. “I shouldn’t be long,” she tells you, “and then we can go home. Here,” she hands you her unlocked phone, “You can play CandyCrush.”

You shoot her a reproachful glare, but take the phone from her hand before she turns to leave the office, following Superman out of the door.

You’re about five levels into the game when you remember the note Justin had slipped you earlier. You glance around the office carefully as if to make sure you are actually alone, before slipping the note out of your back pocket and quickly unfolding it. 

Your heart sinks. 

It’s just one sentence written in his terrible chicken scratch handwriting followed by an IP address.

**_“Always keep fighting the current. 77.874.918.32”_ **

Underneath are three curving diagonal lines slanting down and to the left. 

The symbol of the Resistance. 


	8. Don't Fight the Feeling - Find It.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You sink into a sad kind of normal...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Dubious Consent

The note feels like it’s going to burn right through the thin denim of your jeans the whole way back to Natasha’s apartment. You’d barely had time to shove it back into your pocket as she re-emerged back into her office. You had, briefly, considered trying to swallow it… but you hadn’t had time to memorize the IP address yet... and as much as you know that you probably should… you can’t let it go. 

And  _ damn it _ , Justin. What kind of inane, life-threatening bullshit has he gotten himself involved with and what on earth was he thinking? Justin was a Facebook Warrior- always quick with righteous indignation but _ , “I don’t want to go  _ **_to_ ** _ the protest, do you know what parking in the city is going to be like? I’ll write a check.” _ He never did. 

He wasn’t a fighter... But then again, you hadn’t been either. 

And if Justin is involved then Lexi is 100% involved. Those two can barely take a shit without the other knowing, there is no way he got mixed up in this and kept it a secret from her… matter of fact if you had to put money on it, you’d wager it was the other way around. Lexi has always been a fighter, a defender, and you shouldn’t be surprised that she would have found a way to resist. 

And can they not just be happy in their great big beach side mansion? This never had to be their fight. They never had to endanger themselves. 

And you thought… you thought maybe... after this weekend… maybe it could just be enough for you too . Your family is together and safe and well provided for. And Natasha is…. 

You thought maybe you could settle into this life; find some peace, maybe even some happiness, leave the fight behind. 

But the fight has always come to you. 

If Natasha notices your quiet anxiety on the drive home, she doesn’t comment on it. She just holds your hand over the center console and smiles over at you during red lights, and it’s strange that the churning in your stomach feels something akin to guilt when you meet her kind eyes and feel Justin’s note burning through your pocket.

That night while she’s in the shower you go into the walk-in closet and bury the note deep in the bottom of your memory box underneath concert ticket stubs and a really old bag of weed. 

Your dynamic has shifted with Natasha again and, as has been the case with her the whole time, with every inch you give her, she takes a mile. Now that she knows she can kiss you, she hardly ever stops.

And you  _ don’t  _ mind… exactly. But you feel like you are hurtling very quickly towards something you’re not ready for and you can’t pump the breaks because you are definitely not the person driving the car. 

At the same time, your life with her starts to slip into a mindless blur of days. 

You’re used to being busy. Before…  _ everything, _ you’d had school and friends and family. You’d had concerts and movies and pick-up kickball games in the park. You’d had a shitty part time job in a shitty Lower East Side bar as a cocktail waitress where you made less than shitty tips. You had things to hack and places to go and money to make. 

And then you’d joined the Resistance and you’d grown accustomed to everyday being a literal fighting for your life and now you are…  **_kept_ ** … for lack of a better word.

Everything you need is provided for you. Everything you ask for (except a phone, to watch the news, or for even an inch of space) is given to you. You have no purpose, no goals, no motivation. You have a family you can’t call, a boyfriend in the ground, and an IP address you can’t access. 

It takes a toll. 

Natasha goes into the NWO most days for work now and she brings you along with her, apparently not actually trusting you to stay at her home by yourself. You sit in her office and play games on her  _ fucking child-locked tablet,  _ and read books, and wonder the grounds now that you’ve been assured you’re in no danger there. You see Maria Hill once or twice and you try desperately to meet her eye, but she always looks away from you quickly and you get the feeling she even changes course once or twice to avoid you.  __

You no longer give a shit about what you wear, opting most days for ratty old sweatshirts and throwing your hair up into a messy bun. Natasha does make note one morning when you enter the kitchen in a pair of busted old flip-flops, concerned that you’ll be cold and,  _ “You know how you get when you’re cold.”  _ But you just lift a defiant eyebrow at her and she raises her hands in mock-surrender. She smirks at you later though when you pull your feet up onto the couch in her office and tuck them under her legs. You’ve never been able to handle the cold. 

At night you come home and Natasha makes you both dinner and holds you on the couch while you watch another old movie, her hands and mouth greedy on your skin. 

The monotony and the uselessness creates a whole new kind of despair in you and unfortunately, it’s not one you don’t recognize. You’ve had bouts your whole life. You’ve been in therapy since you were 10 and on and off medication, but it had gotten so much better when you got to SHIELD and got busy but this...

This… this isn’t sadness or grief. This is depression.

And it feels… comfortable. You let it slip around you like a soft blanket and it cools the burn from the note in your closet and Natasha’s lips on your body. You also slip into another terrible, numbing coping mechanism. 

You’re drinking… a lot. And it’s partially to cope and it’s a lot because you’re bored. So you drink and Natasha… let’s you. She mostly doesn’t comment, but she’s the one who does all the grocery shopping and no matter how many bottles you drain, they’re always replaced at the end of the week. 

You think she not-so-secretly likes you more this way. You’re more pliable when you’re buzzing, more open to her advances and accepting of her touches. And you’re a fun drunk, mostly -- bubbly and charming and funny before you cross that precipice into still and numb, but by that time she usually has you wrapped up in her anyways, arms tight around your middle and legs pinning yours between hers as you stare mindlessly at whatever is on the TV, uncaring of her roaming hands and lips.

Her kisses are getting more and more passionate and you’re reciprocating and then most nights you’re full on making out like teenagers, sometimes for hours, because it feels  _ good  _ and you just want to feel  _ anything. _

And then it all comes to its inevitable head. 

Natasha has to take a late night conference call with some NWO sec in Tokyo. She doesn’t bother trying to stop you from listening in, but they’re speaking Japanese which you do not and you’re tipsy and bored so you grab another bottle of wine and meander into the bathroom, deciding you’ll take a bubble bath because it’s almost criminal to let her huge tub go to waste. 

You light some candles and have JARVIS put on a playlist, throw your hair up into a messy bun on top of you head and slip into the tub, chugging half the wine straight from the bottle in one fast go. 

You don’t even realize you’ve fallen asleep until you’re being gently sat up and away from the back of the tub and Natasha is slipping in behind you.

And this is… new. 

You don’t comment or make any move to push her away as she settles in but you are wide awake now and your heart is pounding even in your wine drunk disorientation.

Once she’s settled she pulls you back to rest against her bare chest, her legs spread and running along the outside of yours as she pulls you back firmly to slot against her and her hands come to rest low on your belly. 

She buries her face in the side of your neck planting long, sucking kisses there as her hands stroke lower and lower.

“ _ Please _ ,” she husks into your ear before taking the lobe into her mouth and sucking it gently. “ _ Please _ ?”

And this feels like a dangerous precipice and one you don’t think you want to cross but… you just nod once and lower yourself down a little more on her body. Spreading your legs farther to press up tightly against the length of hers.

She brings one hand up to gently turn your face towards her, kissing you deeply as the other hand descends and you make a needy little high pitched mewing sound into her mouth as her finger begins to circle your clit. 

You want to be embarrassed but her breath hitches at the sound and she pulls back to look at you with wide eyes, pupils so lust blown you can barely see the bright green rings of her irises. 

You push your face back into her, burying your head in her neck while she continues to work your clit and dips her fingers inside you and you’re bucking up into her touch embarrassingly quickly, making desperate little breathy moans before you come with an arching back and long exhale. 

She holds you for a long time after in the cooling water, kissing everywhere she can reach and murmuring over and over again how much she loves you.

You want to cry.

And you do cry, later that night in bed so overwhelmed and confused about everything that you’re feeling and Natasha looks devastated when she rolls your hunched form over to face her and asks brokenly, “Was it.. Did you… did you not want to?”

“No!”  **_Maybe._ ** You reassure her. You can’t let her think that because the thought looks like it’s killing her and that’s not what… that’s not what happened.

“No,” you reassure her again. “No, it’s nothing like that. I promise, I promise I wanted to.” And she still looks so damn heartbroken and unsure that all you can do it kiss her again and guide her hand back between your legs. 

You make a choice in the morning: No more alcohol. 

And it’s easy to replace the booze with sex. It’s another distraction that feels good and a part of you is even glad that it seems to make Natasha so happy.

You know you have some kind of real feelings for her, but they’re so jumbled up in your situation and your uncertainty and they change so rapidly that you can’t make any sense of them.

And the sex is great with her, but it’s so damn  **_intense._ ** It’s passionate and reverent and there is  _ so much eye contact.  _ She handles you like you’re precious and fragile and young and you want to scream at her that you are none of those things, will never be those things again, were barely even ever, and sometimes you don’t even think it’s you she’s looking at in those moments at all. 

You aren’t… that experienced. You met Ryan when you were barely 18 and he was your first  _ everything _ so it’s not like you have a lot to compare it to, but sex with him was… _fun_. It was kinda awkward and fumbling and exciting. You laughed a lot, joked a lot, talked a lot during it. Of course you had your sweet, slow, “ _ I love you so much _ ” sex, but you also had “ _ I have 20 minutes before I have to catch the train _ ” sex and “ _ We are the best team in the history of game night _ ” sex. 

It was intimate, because it was who you were to each other. 

Natasha never lets you reciprocate, no matter how hard you try. She just grabs your wrist and kisses you softly and it makes you feel like sex is something she does  **_to_ ** you and not  **_with_ ** you and that makes you feel so, so lonely.

It’s about a month later that you make another choice. 

You could stay in this life. You could sink in it, drown in it, let it break you down entirely and mold you back into something that fits. You could have holidays with your family and domesticity with Natasha and you could surrender to your circumstances and let them make all the choices for you.

You have got to get to that IP address. 

And there’s about a million and one obstacles in your way, not the least of which is you are almost quite literally  _ never alone.  _ Almost the only time Natasha isn’t glued to your side is at the NWO and you’re ballsy, but you’re not an idiot. There is no way you’re going to attempt to hack one of their servers to access a secret Resistance website. Not unless you want to get everyone on there, including yourself, killed. 

You have no phone, no computer, your Kindle doesn’t even have internet access. Everything at Natasha’s is encrypted and locked and even her fucking Apple TV runs through an encrypted NSO VPN, so even if you could get your hands on some kind of tech while you were briefly unsupervised, even the first indication that you were trying to access an unregistered IP address would sound a million alarms. 

But… there has to be something. Natasha wasn’t too far off the money when she told Brock she was worried you could make a radio out of a hair dryer. You know fuck all about radios (because, hello, what year is it?) But you can make an untraceable hotspot off of just about anything you can connect to a satellite. 

Everyone has an old cell phone laying around. You just need to find hers.

So you do something you haven’t done since the morning before your 10th grade Geometry midterm. You fake sick. 

You wait. You wait until you know it’s a day she absolutely has to go to work. Wonder Woman is flying in from East Asia where the Resistance has recently been able to make some _actual_ headway, overthrowing several NWO overseers in Southern India and, although she’s been more careful than she usually is about letting you eavesdrop on those conversations, you’re almost 100%--- 60% sure that somehow -- they have  _ kryptonite. _

So she cannot miss this meeting and the morning of she wakes up to a cold bed and you with your head in the toilet, begging her to go, that you’ll be fine, that you just want to sleep. 

She’s so, so kind to you as she puts you back to bed. She gets you water and Ginger Ale, leaves saltine crackers on the bedside tables, and orders ahead for Tom Yum soup to be dropped off to you at noon.  **_Great, now I have to deal with the delivery person._ **

But it’s loving, and you almost feel bad for what you’re about to attempt to do. 

Almost. 

As soon as you hear the front door close behind her, you spring out of bed.  _ Where to look? where to look? _

She’s a super spy so you’re assuming “junk drawer” would be a little too obvious and you spend the whole morning bouncing on floorboards and knocking on walls, pulling nic-nacs off shelves and looking behind paintings for any sign of give, any kind of secret door or compartment or cubby space. 

When that doesn’t turn anything up, you go through the freezer and pull the fridge and stove from the wall and then angrily rummage through her make-up bag.

Maybe there really is nothing here. Maybe this whole apartment has been built as an inescapable prison for you the whole time and of course she’s not stupid enough to hide an old cell phone behind the microwave. 

And you give up. Your soup gets delivered and you decide you’re going to go dig your old, dried up ditch weed out of your memory box before you consign yourself to mindless hours of TV when you feel it. 

It’s just the slightest give under the thick carpet in the back of the closet, but it’s the give you’ve been looking for. 

You drop to your hands and knees and trace the carpeting to the edges of the wall and… it’s not glued down. It pulls back easily, revealing dark stained hardwood underneath and one board that is just slightly more warped than the rest. 

The board is stuck in tight, but you find an old SHIELD ID card in your memory box and manage to slip in between the seams, slowly working the wooden plank up from its place.

It’s a deep opening, deeper than you would expect for a top floor apartment with downstairs neighbors, but sitting in the bottom is a single shoe box. 

It looks old and you don’t recognize the logo and the writing on the store label is in Russian, you think, or a close enough dialect. 

You gently lift the dusty lid and peer inside. 

And  **_score._ ** The first thing you see is an old StarkPhone- second generation, maybe even first, but it will do. You can make due with that, it’s exactly what you need, it's a charger laying curled beside it. 

And you should be done, take what you need and go but you’re… so curious. For as…  _ well _ … as you know her now, you don’t know her at all, really, and you want to see…

You gently remove the rest of the items from the old box. There are more phones. A Blackberry, a razor.. something that just kind of looks like a beige brick. But there are also documents. There are green cards and passports and birth certificates from dozens of countries and at least 10 different North American fake IDs all with her picture spanning from Ontario to Santa Fe. 

There’s also a shit ton of United States cash, and you’re tempted to grab it and run until you remember it no longer has any value. 

You’re about to carefully pack her things back in their hidden treasure chest when you come across one last thing, upside down at the bottom.

It’s a photograph, old and bent and time warped. There are two young girls in it, 16, maybe 17 if you had to guess. They’re dressed as ballerinas and their faces are stern and the one on the left is so obviously a young Natasha with her steady poise and green eyes and bright red hair and the girl on the right…

You just… stare at her for a while. You’re heart races and you begin to sweat and you don’t think you’ll have to fake being sick anymore because you really do feel like you’re about to throw up.

She’s younger, sterner behind the eyes, maybe a little taller but… she looks exactly like you. She has your hair and your eyes, your jawline and your cheekbones. If you held this photo up next to a picture of you from high school, she could be your very serious twin. 

You have no name and no context for her but the realization of her slams into you hard. She is the reason Natasha clang to you. She is the reason for your current situation and the reason you’re alive. 

You hastily, much more hastily than you should, shove everything back into the old shoe box except for the StarkPhone. You can’t look at her sad, trapped eyes anymore. They look too familiar. 

You bury the box back under the floorboard but you know you’ll hear it beating like a heart in your dreams while you sleep next to Natasha tonight. 

But you have bigger fish to fry right now. You have a phone and a charger and 2 hours at most before you can expect Natasha home. 

You get to work.

And it is no small feat. It takes you forever to dismantle the sim-card and re-wire the GPS and find a satellite far enough away that you can access for enough time to scramble your location, giving you less than 15 minutes to get on this IP address before it can be traced back to you. 

It’s a simple algorithm, ancient but effective. 

When you finally crack through, a blinking green square appears on a black screen and almost immediately the words, “ _ State your purpose here _ ” pop up in blocky green letters.

You think. 

You can’t just say, _ “Hi my name is (y/n y/l/n) I was a member of the Resistance before I was claimed by the Black Widow and the NWO literally owns me now and I was slipped this IP address by my brother after a barbecue.” _

You think back to the note, back to your training. 

“ _ I’m here to fight the current. _ ” You type out. 

  
“ _ Welcome, (y/n). We’ve been expecting you _ .”

**Author's Note:**

> First fanfic...


End file.
